


Overproof

by theory_of_mice



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-03-08 11:56:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13457754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theory_of_mice/pseuds/theory_of_mice
Summary: Definition: overproof - when dough is left to rise for too slow or too long and the subsequent cooking heat results in a collapsed crumb structure and flattened shape. In a district fueled by discrimination and inequality, one fiery girl sparks a revolution in the hearts of four boys. Each has their own personal flame to add to the fire, but share a common goal: Panem will burn. AU





	1. Day 1 - Peeta

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: The following narratives mention, describe, or allude to uncomfortable and possibly triggering topics including, but not limited to, torture, suicide, self-harm, prostitution, starvation, rape, child-abuse, racism, cursing, and graphic anatomy. These are in no way meant to hurt or distress you. Please use your good judgment before reading and feel free to discuss certain matters in the comments section. I will appreciate and respond to everything you have to say.

**Wednesday, 3rd week of November, 73rd Winter AN (anno nix – in the year of Snow)**

_**Peeta, pt. 1:** _

She often arrives at Rising Hour, when the soft, billowing tops of rolls and sweet buns swell under the mellifluous heat of the morning ovens. While his hands arrange the swollen, sticky dough in neat little lines to rise, his gaze minds the streaked kitchen windows to catch a glimpse of her slipping by in the empty alleys, bag bloated with game to trade. And when she strides past, hair glossy and skin gilded by the salmon-honeyed hues of dawn, he'd dare say his heart rises quicker than the yeasted goods before him, growing fast and sudden in his throat, choking his breath like bitter weeds in the flower boxes.

An overproof, they call that – when the temperature is too hot or the yeasting period too long and too slow. The loaves fall like sinkholes in the oven and the Mellarks are forced to eat dense, gummy bread for the following weeks. Peeta knows it's been much too hot for far too long because his hands have gotten sweaty at the sight of her since first grade. His heart always caves as she disappears out of sight.

This morning, though, she is early. The kitchen is still cold, the dough still sticky as he startles out of his kneading reverie to watch her race past, game bag flopping emptily against her hip. Alongside her long ebony braid, Katniss Everdeen's intense gaze is one of her trademark features, thus his stab of worry when he notices her moony eyes and mussy hair.

If he were in the practice of talking to her, he might ask her about the conflicted crease between her eyes or the preoccupied slump of her shoulders. Even so, today would not be the day. Today is Bake Day – his day to stay home and tend the ovens while Miche goes to school and Emmer, too old for classes now, hauls shipments from the trainyard. It has never bothered Peeta to miss his lessons – they've all turned to coal production since Reaping Grade anyway, and his mother reminded him often enough that he would never amount to anything more than a baker, _Like your useless father._ She's made it cuttingly-clear his hands will never touch coal in any form.

Watching the first snowflakes swoop from the sky, Peeta dwells on the impossibility of this objective as each tiny dancer, crystalline white, fouettés into the black street embers, a diamond turned to coal. _Nothing is sacred here,_ he thinks, _nothing is safe._

Come noon, the lithe little dancers have doubled in size, flowering the sky with a crisp, brisk smell. The ovens are blazing merrily and the dough needs punching. Going about his chores, Peeta thinks this is as fine a day as ever to skip school. He imagines how icy the classrooms must be, with only a grungy pot-bellied stove sputtering in the front corner and all the Seam children huddled in the back. He remembers with relief Katniss' heavy leather jacket and snarled wool scarf, and wanders towards the cold drip-drops of the cracked windows, trying to cool the fever-inducing heat of the kitchen from his cheeks. The wind is full of whistles and snaps and little gasps of air from the people outside.

"I'm expecting crowds soon." Bran Mellark bustles in, wiping his hands on a soiled apron folded around his waist. "There always are before a big storm. Sometimes I think the crowds are a better indicator of the weather than the Capitol forecasts."

He smiles affably at his own joke and knocks Peeta between the wide expanse of his shoulders, "Put some more sweet buns to rise. Bitter winters always taste better with some icing on top."

Lilwen Mellark flies in like a banshee, barking a scornful retort, "You'd be better off baking more rye molasses loaves. If they share half a brain between the bunch, they'll want something that'll last the next few days of the storm."

She stops to prod Bran in the chest, "And if you're using the only half of a brain you've got, you'll raise the prices on everything to make up for snow closures."

The heavy tread of footsteps past the shop front catches her attention and she bustles to the tilling counter, throwing over her shoulder, "The crowds are here already, you better have something for me to sell."

Bran smiles wryly at his son, pulling down bags of flour from the stock shelves and snorting out the white clouds that settle into his wiry beard. A careful knock raps at the garden door and Bran makes a surprised noise as he straightens to answer it. Cold, delicious air flows in from the open entryway.

"I'll admit, I didn't think I'd be seeing you today, young lady."

The soft, smoky lilt of the Seam folk answers back in a delicate soprano, "I know, I'm sorry, sir. The snow slows things down a bit."

"Of course, of course, it's not a problem. I can hear the market crowds out and about already. Please, come in for a bit and warm up, you must be freezing."

Her muffled protests are interrupted as Bran pulls the door open wider and ushers her in, saying, "It will take just as long to bargain inside, I promise you. I know you must be in a hurry to get home before the weather worsens."

Her boots track snow onto the kitchen tiles and Peeta glimpses blue fingertips peeking out of raveling mitten flaps. He gives her a gracious smile, a simple nod. Her lips press into a thin line of acknowledgment.

"All alone today?" his father asks. The rose on her cheeks deepens and she ducks her head.

"No matter," Bran looks kindly at her, "What've we got today?"

She tugs her mittens off and pulls out three small squirrels, furry and limp. "There wasn't time to skin them beforehand, but I can do it now if you like."

Bran nods appreciatively, but says, "Not to worry, I can do that just fine. What'll you take for them? A rye molasses loaf?"

If Katniss is astounded by the offer, she hides it well and simply says, after a guarded hesitation, "That'll be fine."

Peeta is astonished by his father's trade – three squirrels are worth half a loaf of day-old bran bread, but he watches him reach for a sweet-smelling molasses loaf still crackling from the fire.

While he wraps it steaming in brown wax paper, a particularly long whistle cuts through the subdued winterland and ends in a sickening _snap_ , like fire-crackers during the annual Tribute Parades. A crowd runs by the shop front towards the square, drumming the frozen cobblestones in mass hysteria. Another whistle, shrill and wailing, slices the air. _Craack_

Katniss' eyes go wide and bright, body tense and tight. Peeta glances at his father, who seems dazed and lost in bygone years.

"Is that a… No, it's been so long since I heard – we haven't had a whipping in decades…"

At the mention of _whipping,_ Peeta looks to Katniss, but she is already twisting around, slipping on the wet floor tiles and striking her head against the door jamb as she tears out into the slushy alley, mittens dropped in thoughtless urgency.

For a precarious second, Peeta stands perfectly still, but the sound of the whip singing releases him like a floodgate into the cold, glum passageway, skidding against the brick walls as he peers over the gathering multitude of district people. Peacekeepers rush past, shoving onlookers out of their way, yelling and shaking batons to disperse the crowds. _Craack_.

People move aside to let Peeta through, dark Seam eyes glaring at him warily.

"What're you doin' here boy?"

"You'll only make it worse. Scat!"

"There's nothing to do – best leave while you can."

But Peeta presses bravely on and on and on, and he wishes he would stop because the whip never stops, never relents, never quiets, until –

"STOP! Stop, you're going to kill him, you – STOP!"

At the edge of the crowd now, Peeta watches Katniss' tiny, bundled form clutch at a peacekeeper's upstretched arm, whip in hand, silver Head uniform spattered with countless garnet jewels of blood. Directly in line with the slick lash's licks, the limp corpse of a dark-haired, bloodied boy is bound to a gnarled, upright post. Dark eddies of blood slither between the cobblestones, making the ground sticky and wet. The toes of Peeta's boots are stained a cherry wine, and when he moves, he leaves crimson kisses on the soggy snow.

The whip is mid whistle when the peacekeeper throws it to the ground, grabbing Katniss by her jacket collar. There is such force behind his violent jostling that her arms slip out of the sleeves and her scarf chafes raw and red. He tosses her aside with indifferent ferocity.

Tripping over the glaze-eyed body of Commander Cray, Katniss' head smacks against the ice with a nauseating thud. Her braid dips into the pools of blood pulsing languidly from Cray's neck, a slick smiling slit. The Head peacekeeper bends to retrieve the cat o' nines and turns with mild amusement as Katniss scrapes herself off the ground, placing her body between the boy's shredded skin and the thirsty flick of whip.

It occurs to Peeta that he's never seen this Head before, all hard, calloused brawn and none of the soft, hoary belly that belonged to Cray. Seeing Katniss suck in heaving gulps of defiance, the man smiles icily, and rasps, "What's the boy to you, girl? He broke the law. This is a poacher's punishment."

Katniss croaks back, winded, "Under what ruling? We haven't had a whipping in ages."

"It's a new era, sweetheart." His teeth glisten white and sharp, "Old Cray has been dispatched. Welcome to the rule of Romulus Thread. Now, if you don't move, you'll feel it firsthand just like your friend here. I can guarantee you won't get up from this one."

His hand flickers to the gun clipped at his waist, but Katniss doesn't move, and the crowd is reverent in their silence.

With one fluid movement, Thread draws the gun and aims between her eyes, squinting for accuracy. In the same moment, the crowd erupts in panicked tumult, pushing against each other, swallowing Peeta even as he struggles to reach Katniss and pull her out of the way. He is walled in on all sides when the crowd settles enough to glimpse a younger peacekeeper with startlingly red hair and a blooming bruise along his jaw approach Thread cautiously, murmuring counsel under his breath. Thread looks disdainfully at his underling before he sweeps his gaze back to Katniss, dips the barrel slightly and shoots, bright, sharp and sudden, into the bitter air.

The square is hushed with disbelief, motionless except for that broad-shouldered baker-boy wrestling his way to the front, stopping stock-still at the sight of a slender, raven-haired rebel crumpled on the blood-slicked stones.

If District 12 had been looking at a clock, they would have realized that it takes exactly six seconds for the first citizen, a hard-boned Seam widow named Purnia who bathes bodies at the mortuary, to give the opening mutinous cry, " _Murder_ _!_ " before the horde of seven hundred onlookers surge forward with shared strength and shouts of:

_Unarm him!_

_Bastard!_

_No right! No justice!_

_Down with the Peace!_

There is a heat and a passion and a movement that Peeta recognizes too well, a fast flowering excitement that can only end in a collapse of structure.

_Overproof._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I'd like to thank FortuneFaded2012 and whiskeyneat from the deepest fathoms of my heart for advising me on all my run-on sentences and over-zealous similes and my confusing plots, but most of all, for simply being there to encourage me, brainstorm with me, and celebrate my progress! These betas have made a metamorphic difference in this story that I don't want to go unnoticed. Much love to you!
> 
> As you might have noticed, these chapters are the product of their support - revised and beautified by their tender attentions. I do encourage you to re-read these chapters, as they are so much more improved. Edited chapters 2 and 3 will arrive soon.
> 
> Now some trivia. I'd like to provide little explanations at the end of each chapter explaining name origins, world-building, and general tidbits that might provoke some fun discussions in the comments. So here we go:
> 
> Anno Nix is a term I've coined to label the years following the First Rebellion, starting with the first Hunger Games (1 Anno Nix) and advancing with each consecutive Game. Similar to AD, or Anno Domini, which means In the Year of the Lord, Anno Nix means In the Year of Snow, denoting President Snow's despotic reign.
> 
> Peeta's brothers, and father, are named according to their trade, just like Peeta. Bran alludes to the husks of a grain, sometimes separated from the flour and sold separately for a discounted price. Miche is the name of a Parisian-style sourdough, usually made from a natural leavener and a high percentage of whole wheat flour. And Emmer refers to emmer wheat, also known as farro.
> 
> Lastly, I know that in cannon Purnia is a Peacekeeper, but keeping with my exaggerated themes of gender/race/age discrimination, I chose to make Peacekeeping a male-dominated career. Purnia is still present in the narrative as a Seam resident, though.
> 
> Thank you, all of you, for following along and visiting me in the comments. It's such an inspiration to continue writing when I read all your musings and laughter. See you there!
> 
> Much love,
> 
> theory of mice


	2. Day 1 - Thom

**Wednesday, 3rd week of November, 73rd Winter Anno Nix**

**_Thom, pt. 1:_ **

She arrives on the thirty-sixth lashing, but the thirty-sixth lashing never comes. From his vantage point between two powder barrels, Thom can see all too clearly the frayed ends of his hap-dash plan unraveling with alarming speed.

It had been deceivingly simple, really. All of it. You see, harsh winters in District 12 pointed to one thing: junior listings for the mines.

Thom didn't care if it meant that he would be assigned a dead man's helmet or wear overalls arthritic with the memory of older, colder bones. If he felt the frozen consciousness of their former owner creeping into his peripheral, he'd welcome it as a far friendlier soul than the ones he was used to dealing with, not excluding himself.

Thom had the familiar hung-man quality leftover from his youth, days spent sitting up with dead bodies that no longer resembled loved ones and hours sitting outside mine entrances, time and time again, waiting devoid of expectations for a father or a brother to return. He remembers what  _did_  return, and that perhaps haunts him more than the memory of what didn't. One is never prepared, at any age, to retrieve the half-blown head of his father. He's had sad eyes and a scruff ever since.

It's this look that the Town girls, gaggled together in tight clusters and blushing like redbuds, call  _ruggedly Seam_. For some of Thom's acquaintances, it's enough to secure a warm body for the night – a meager gain from all the losses. The Seam harlots recognize it as a fast coin, that familiar face of prey left pinned and helpless in their grief. Thom only flies it as a flag of patriotism: District 12, where you can model your misery like so many Capitol mannequins. Perhaps they'll come out to paint him sometime.

Yet as he stands in the slowly coiling line of seven- and eighteen-year olds, his fate begins to take a more tangible, touchable form: that drafting list with every slot a promised salary and every name a grave. But the specifics of his ensuing life hold no interest for him, only the promise of the near future.

This much he knows: he will sign that drafting list and take the registration receipt, slide it to the district recordkeeper. He will present his rickety signature, full of crossed T's and sharp M's like a broken picket fence, and watch as the Capitol attendant highlights his name with effervescent ink and draws a straight, clean line through RESIDENCE: Community Home. He will watch his first house assignment being jot down in careful, crunched numbers, and he will try to ignore the empty ache that smells just like death emanating from the house as much as he will try to forget the empty ache that is just himself, alone in youth. This much he knows.

What he does not know, nor foresee, is that even as he readies to sign his life away until the dark earth covers him, the Capitol takes one more thing away from him: his best friend. It is a silent realization by both parties. The peacekeepers are loud enough, yelling and shoving and beating and slapping and  _What-are-you-gonna-do-now-Seam-scum?_  And in one sacred moment, Gale lifts his bloodied face to the mines and Thom can see the ending in his eyes.

They acknowledge each other, as friends do, with a nod on Thom's part and a raise of the chin on Gale's, and though not one of them says a word, Thom feels instinctively that it is his brotherly duty to bear witness to his pain, to see him through to the end. That is a rare and unusual honor in District 12.

So, Thom falls in line with the shambolic crowd trailing the Peacekeepers and their captured criminal. With this, he knows one more thing: he will watch until the end. He will not interfere; a man's fate is his own. When it is done, he will carry Gale's body home to his family. That much he is prepared to do.

He lingers in the fringes of the crowd, away from the current of tension trembling through the mob. A black-eyed man with ashen hair nails a stiff turkey into the gnarled wood of the whipping post and listens cynically to Cray's drunken defense of the victim. Thom resists the wave of unrest that surfs the crowd when a shiny Capitol blade glimmers against Cray's neck.

He grits his teeth and counts resolutely,  _one…two…three_ , as nine hooks bite hungrily into dark, muscled back.

_Ten…eleven…twelve._

He bids goodbye to the old regime bleeding out onto the cobblestones.

_Twenty-two…twenty-three._

He breathes in relief when Gale's body slumps limply against the notched wooden post.

_Thirty-four…thirty-five…thirty-_

"STOP! Stop, you're going to kill him, you – STOP!"

And there she is. The girl who wrecks all his plans. He has only ever known her as an orbiting entity of hope, that bright, dashing feeling that strikes you so quick so sound in every soft part of your being – it's no wonder Gale has guarded her like a Reaping pardon-card. She embodies everything decent in Panem: beauty, endurance, perseverance, pride, loyalty. And courage, that blind, foolish urge that brings him to the present predicament.

He considers walking away, because he doesn't think he has the resolve to witness something as pure as Katniss Everdeen being crushed and smothered under so much hate. His back is turned, his mind made up, his boots chewing icy slush when the hammer cocks  _tick_  and the gun spits  _tock_  and the crowd speaks  _stop_.

And slowly, slowly,  _now_ , Thom bears witness to a different kind of pain then he had anticipated. It is a communal pain, one shared through the visceral emotions of Purnia Meadowfrey's mutinous cries, her neighbor's upraised fist, proud and angry, the first rock flying from a corner of the snowy square. Peacekeepers staggering back as the crowd rushes forward, someone shoving a brick shard in his hand sweeping him towards the swirl of turmoil and strife.

There is a dreamy quality to the chaos around him – perhaps because he has dreamed of this day, this particular scene, these bodies pulling him into the lawless undercurrent and the weight of this sharp shard biting his hand as his arm draws back, circling closer and closer to the pristine uniforms of his tormenters…

Until, with a hypnic jerk he is brought back to reality at the sight of Katniss in his peripheral, stirring on the frozen ground oblivious to the terror about her. A blonde boy grapples his way through the crowd to kneel by her side and help her up, but she pushes him away, murmuring something under her breath, shaking her head weakly.

Gripping the brick once more in his hand, he considers the sweet taste of rebellion before turning roughly against the tide, shouldering his way to the looming whipping post and its bleeding disciples.

Katniss is on her knees now, fingers trembling with something reminiscent of pain or shock or wasted adrenaline as she scrabbles at the tight knots securing Gale's wrists to the pillar. She hasn't registered that Thom is by her side – she hasn't registered anything besides Gale's immediate proximity, so he knocks her hands away and gestures to the stocky Townie to hold her back as he saws through the rope with the brick mortar's edge. Katniss shrugs away the hands on her shoulders and shoves the Townie's elbows towards Gale.

Her voice is strained and low, "Help him. I'm fine.  _Help him._ "

The brick shard gnaws hungrily at the frayed rope, but not ravenously enough. A severe-faced Peacekeeper notices their activity and strides towards them, away from the melee. His hand goes to the metal baton at his waist. His voice is sharp and clanging.

"Hey, get away from there. You can't – "

The warning is cut short when a red-haired Peacekeeper – a high-ranking officer with fire-bright hair, comes up behind his comrade and whacks the back of his head with a heavy cudgel. Momentarily stunned, the Peacekeeper staggers forward, allowing his attacker to reach around his shoulder and gouge two fingers into a pressure point. The officer falls to the ground. Red-head wastes no time in unsheathing the Capitol-issued switchblade at his belt and tossing it to Thom.

"Best not let them see you with that, so be quick about it. I'll find it in a powder barrel outside the Hob."

Thom nods at him before he is swallowed once more by the crowd. The knife is polished and wicked and smiles merrily as it cuts the rope. Soon Thom is uncoiling the cord from about Gale's wrists. Katniss lurches forward to catch his body, breathing  _Gale, Gale, Gale_  as if the world had forgotten his name. Thom hooks a hand under Gale's arm and eases him down.

"How are we gonna get him out of here?" The blonde boy glances worriedly around at the violence erupting throughout the square.

"You got a jacket?" Thom inquires, eyeing the boy's thin shirt with sleeves pushed past his forearms.

His blonde hair falls in his eyes as he shakes his head. Thom shrugs and sheds his coal-crusted coat, laying it on the ground beside Katniss' forgotten leather.

"We'll take him on this," Thom indicates the row of jackets, "'less you wanna find a board or some such."

Judging from the alarm sputtering behind his blue eyes, the boy does  _not_  intend to find a board, or even "some such", amongst the flying rubble and bellows and batons. He only nods briefly and looks to Thom for instructions.

"You boys needin' some help?"

Bristel stands tall and resolute, even while blood makes the hem of her dress hang heavy and wet. Her younger sister, Leevy, kneels to help Katniss to her feet, gripping her shoulders protectively as she eyes the ruby stains growing fresh-hot on her friend's side. The girls grew up near the Everdeens, up until their father's arthritic condition moved them closer to his new job at the mule shed. With family funds tight, Bristel hitched a widower last summer when she aged out of the reaping, a year above Thom and Gale's pool. Now she and her husband live two shanties down from the Hawthornes.

"You willin' to tow?

"Me and my husband can take the front." With grey eyes gleaming, she pinches her fingers together and whistles shrilly into the mob. An older man, many years her elder, looks up from a group of miners attempting to build a barrel blockade and jogs over.

He tugs his cap respectfully to Thom and the Townie, "Afternoon, boys. You'll be needing our help then?"

"We'll lay him over the jackets, boost him with the sleeves." Thom points to the man's humped shoulder, "He ain't heavy, but you sure you can carry with that?"

The man grins, "Boy, I been carryin' with this befores you were born. Let me prove myself."

"So long as we get 'im to the Everdeens, that'll be proof enough for me. Katniss, you willin' to lead?"

Looking behind him as the others drag Gale over to the jackets, Thom finds Leevy holding snow to Katniss' side and looking worriedly into her eyes. The fussing embarrasses Katniss even though she and Leevy go to school together. Nevertheless, Katniss looks too dazed to refuse her attentions, allowing Leevy to turn her head this way and that as she examines the deep cut over one eyebrow and the dark bruises blooming at her temple.

"She hit her head so hard, she's got a proper coal cluster growing on the back. She's bleeding heavy from the bullet, too."

"You can walk?" Thom asks bluntly.

Katniss pulls away from Leevy's arms and straightens a little wearily. "I'm fine."

Thom thinks,  _This, this is what a woman ought to be_ , but of course, Katniss is only fifteen – a woman enough for the Seam, but still so little in the world that it smarts a good deal. So, he only turns, tucks Darius' knife into his belt, and picks up the sleeve across from the blonde boy, behind Bristel and her husband.

"Leevy," he barks, "on your way home, stop by and let Hazelle know, will you?"

She bows her head dutifully and starts towards the shops until Katniss reaches for her arm frantically.

"The kids," she rasps, "They're still… school will be out soon. Will you wait for them and walk them home?"

Leevy reassures her and Thom is ashamed he hadn't thought of them before now. They've got no business wandering into the middle of a riot unprotected. It's dangerous enough for two Seam kids to be strolling around Town alone.

Leevy turns to leave when Katniss calls, "And Leevy? Don't let them see.  _Please_."

Leevy shakes her head, "I'll walk 'em the long way. Promise. I'll send Hazelle and Prim over as soon as possible and stay with the kids myself."

And then she is off.

 _It's about time we are, too_ , Thom thinks, dissecting the corners of their path, scrutinizing the flashes of fire grenades that peek from behind angles and overhangs.

"Let's go," he grits, "Bristel, you know the way?"

"Took my brother there last year when he nearly died of measles. I reckon I can find it again."

Slowly, tenderly, they make their way, Gale swaying between them and Katniss stumbling painfully behind.

Nearing the black-smoke-burnt-crisp walls of the Hob, the blonde boy looks generously at Thom and extends a pale hand in his direction.

"Peeta, by the way."

Thom shoves his rough, sooty hand into his and crushes it.

"From the bakery, right?" he asks.

Peeta looks surprised at the recognition, "That's right. How did you –"

"Watch yer back!"

With an honest aim, Thom tosses the Capitol blade into a barrel outside the Hob entrance and arranges his mouth into a friendly grimace, stepping over trash scattered on the gravel path.

"Thom. Welcome to the neighborhood."

With those words, Thom's heart gives a little jolt at the sudden silence that surrounds them. As much as the square was harsh and wild and vicious, the Seam is grey and hushed and still. And then the gunshots sing.

_Overproof._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In regards to junior listings for the mines, I imagine that the regular listings would be offered after the conclusion of the year's Hunger Games. It's important for the Games to be the focus of every citizen during their airing. Starting such a labor-intensive job would leave the workers too exhausted to pay much attention to the Games. Despite being 18 at some point before their last reaping, reaping-age boys would not be considered unless the alternative outcome meant a sudden drop in overall reaping-age children. In the case of a bad winter, the Capitol reasons that more children will survive given that someone in their family has a stipend with which to buy food, fuel, and warm clothes. Regardless of any mine related deaths, the number of child deaths as a result of famine or cold will far outweigh any child workers subsequently caught in a mine collapse, and even then, their siblings would hypothetically be able to live on their compensation money until the next reaping.
> 
> Thom being labeled 'good looking' by the Town girls is a nod to something I sensed while reading the books. Both Peeta and Katniss mention Gale's handsomeness and reputation as something deduced from the school girls' gossip. Yet, given Katniss' account of the Seam's preoccupation with food and survival, I personally doubt the Seam girls were the ones gossiping in the school bathrooms and halls about hot boys and sexcapades. This leaves only the opinions of the Town girls who have been raised to perceive all Seam boys immoral and up to no good, just as their female counterparts are branded wild and overly promiscuous. Note that Peeta and his brothers are only ever labeled as strong and athletic – the Town girls never mention the older Mellark boys and their romantic escapades, despite probably knowing them even better than a Seam boy like Gale. I'm led to believe that Seam men are very much the culprit of over-sexualization, similar to the plight of the African American men in white society. Anyway, this is just my personal opinion, and an explanation at what I was trying to convey. I'm expanding on these themes within my own story.
> 
> I love Hazelle's name because it is a combination of both a mining term and a reference to nature, two common themes in the Seam community. I'm partial towards the mining term, Hazle, because it means "a tough mixture of sandstone and shale", which I believe is very reflective of her character (she's one tough woman!). Hazelle is simply a more feminine spelling.
> 
> "A hypnic jerk, hypnagogic jerk, sleep start, sleep twitch or night start is an involuntary twitch which occurs just as a person is beginning to fall asleep, often causing them to awaken suddenly for a moment." (Wikipedia)
> 
> Bristel is a common example of a Seam girl aged out of reaping, but not eligible to work in the coal mines (apart from "womanly jobs" such as watering the mules or sorting slate from the coal haul). The Capitol would not allow women to mine underground because of the potential health implications that might affect their bearing/raising children for the reaping pool. Therefore, Seam women were restricted to two options once they survive the 'bowl': marry/bear children and rely on a husband's stipend, or prostitution, whereas Town girls were given a little more leeway in that they could run shops and businesses apart from their spouses, such as Rooba the butcher. Some Seam women, like Greasy Sae or Ripper, have their own enterprises, but not all women can live to sixty years old by selling stews made of mice meat, pig entrails and tree bark. In short, an 18 (or younger) year old marrying someone twice or thrice her age is not surprising at all, rather deemed a clever business transaction that satisfies many needs at once.
> 
> Finally, I know Purnia is a Peacekeeper in cannon. However, I've decided to assign the job of peacekeeping a male-only career, just to play on the social injustice and inequality themes.
> 
> Much love,
> 
> theory of mice


	3. Day 1 - Crumb

**_Wednesday, 3rd week of November, 73rd Winter Anno Nix_ **

**_Crumb, pt. 1:_ **

* * *

_crumb – n. – the interior of a loaf as defined by its holes; pl. - fragments, bits, or pieces broken off from various original sources and mixed together into a homogenous blend_

* * *

She arrives at her house broken in more ways than one. To begin with, her skull feels like a tortuous seam is being mined deep within, coiling and curling like a smoldering snake who swallows all withstanding words and feelings. Thinking is impossible, especially when blood is running into her eye and she's trying so hard to place one foot in front of another, dodging the trail of blood-drops weeping from Gale's back.

It's a forty-minute walk from the Square to home and her shirt is sopping and icy from where Leevy's snow-pack has melted into her body heat. Katniss doesn't think she has the balance to bend down and scoop a fresh dressing, so she clamps her hands tight over her abdomen and hopes the bleeding stops.

The stairs up to her porch are slippery as pondweed and sloping like the Goat Man's buckled back. It takes precious minutes to maneuver Gale's inert body up the flight, but this is not the first time Thom has done this. Katniss doesn't trust many people, and especially not with the lives of loved ones. If she were to trust one person to carry Gale home, it would be the dark-eyed man in front of her who's held secrets longer than he's held kin.

Even while they burst through the door, Katniss hangs frozen at the base of the stairs like a dark stalagmite, all bruised and bloodied and blue. It's the baker's boy who sees her beyond the open entry and rushes outside, slipping on the glassy ice in his rush to wrap his arm about her shoulders and guide her up the steps. Her mother barely looks up when they stumble inside. Instead her hands are preoccupied with bottled herbs and tinctures and murky liquids that Katniss smells from ten feet off. Gale is lying facedown on the tabletop, lifeless and still while Thom tugs the jackets out from underneath him.

Mrs. Everdeen thrusts a bowl each at Bristel and her husband, saying, "Snow. Fresh, clean snow. As much as you can find."

They slam the door behind them on their way out.

"You." She points at Peeta still steadying Katniss in the entryway, "I need as many rags torn up from these shirts as possible. Set them in the kettle to boil as you go."

Katniss feels his absence acutely in the chill that settles around her shoulders, but he takes up his task resolutely, glancing over at her every other _rip_ and _stretch_.

"You can build a fire?"

Thom nods promptly.

"Good. I need a nice hot one – as high as you can make it."

There's a dull blur of time passing as Katniss sways, disoriented in the speckled snowfall light. Mrs. Everdeen gropes in the dark corners of the cupboard for sour wine and upends an entire bottle into a steel bowl with methodical _glugs_. Between her palms she crushes herbs and flowers, pinches powders and salt, scattering them over the vinegar.

Katniss forms the names numbly in her mouth, _Oregano, Thyme… Yarrow, Elm_. She shivers and replays the memories of gathering those remedies with Gale three months ago. When the leaves were just beginning to turn brown and their mouths turned away from frowns – when the only blood let down was hers. She had slipped with the knife while whittling slippery-slick elm quills off the tree and Gale had laughed at her. Afterwards, he ripped his own shirt to bind her hand and walked all the way home barebacked in the cold. Somehow, today feels risibly mirrored to that moment, turnt upside down by some perverted maker; a game made just for him.

Remorselessly, the present comes skulking back with the clank of the vinegar soak on the table stool and the fire's cackle when the kettle boils over.

"Help me wash him."

Mrs. Everdeen enlists both young men to help, wringing out steaming rags and demonstrating straight, smooth strokes on his arms and neck. They come away gory and black with soot and gravel.

She tends to his face herself, dabbing delicately at his split lip and bashed forehead, skimming over the welts on his cheekbones and wetting his blood-crusted eyelashes with clean cloths until they are as black and thick as before.

"Good, good. That's good."

The boys pause at her praise and she nods once to relinquish them. Katniss has a starry gaze that quivers at every movement, but she doesn't respond when the baker's boy gathers her fingers around a damp cloth and holds it to her nose. The cold has made it bleed and Katniss hadn't noticed the hot blood running down her chin.

"Hold him down for me."

Blue eyes look at the healer questioningly, "Hold him down? He's been passed out for over two hours."

But Thom just grunts and grabs a shoulder.

The vinegar trickling off the rag drips like chimes and seems innocent enough. Yet in the instant Mrs. Everdeen lays the cloth over the weeping lacerations on his back, Gale Hawthorne comes alive.

There's a horrific gasp, like a purple-faced newborn gulping for air after the umbilical cord is loosened from around his neck, and then his back arches and he whimpers in a way Katniss doesn't recognize. Still, her mother never falters, soaking the rag and dousing his back in calm, repetitive strokes.

Gale rocks his shoulders and shudders under her hands. He moans, and the world is too bright for Katniss.

"You need to give him something first. You need to – no, please. Please, just wait until – he needs something for the pain…"

Her mother doesn't look up so Katniss reaches for him. She runs her hands through his hair to comfort him, to comfort herself.

"Please stop. Please…" he struggles and keens in her arms, "You're not listening! Can't you hear – you're hurting him! Stop!"

She does stop. She looks Thom straight in the eye and asks him over the erratic requiem of Gale's labored choking and Katniss' hyper ventilations, "Is she hurt?"

Thom grimaces at her clinical tone, but grips Gale's bicep harder and says, "They shot her in the side. We got snow on it right away."

She raises her eyebrows, whether at Thom's explanation or Katniss' quiet pleading underneath her breath, _Please, please, please. Gale._

Peeta speaks up from the opposite end of the table, "She fell twice and hit her head both times. I heard it."

"Katniss, look at me."

Her head snaps up, eyes hopeful. Mrs. Everdeen stares for a brief and analytical second, then says, "She's in shock. Take her to the back room."

"No! Please, just listen to me! You're not listening!"

Katniss' hands try to knock the vinegar bowl but Thom snatches her wrists like fireflies in a bottle and pulls her away from the table.

"STOP! I need to help him! I need – Git off me! _Git off_ – Gale!"

She fights like fire on a windy day in Thom's grip, no matter how hard he tries to pin her arms to her sides. It takes Peeta's additional strength to drag her to the only other room in the otherwise open-floor house: a small 10-by-10 square tucked in the back corner and enclosed by two poorly erected walls stuffed with straw-mud for insulation. She screams all the while.

"I know how it feels! Please, just listen to him! I can feel it! Just listen! It _hurts_! You're hurting him!"

Thom grabs her shoulders and pushes her against one wall, feeling it rattle and sway beneath her. "Hey, okay, okay. Stop. _Katniss_ , stop!"

She is all sharp elbows and snapping teeth. Thom can tell from the corner of his eye that Peeta doesn't quite know what to do.

"He's safe, Katniss. There's nothing more you can do. He's safe."

She screams and rocks against him because she can still hear the table groaning and Gale hissing in the next room.

Thom lets out a frustrated breath as he pins her once more against the wall. She's taken to wailing, long and endless, never taking a breath. So, Thom pulls his hand back and smacks her square across the jaw, enough to make her gasp and break for air. Her eyes are wide and on display. She turns into the wall, holding her hips as she slides slowly down to the floor. Peeta stands in the corner, stunned and angrily bewildered. Thom only shakes his head and mutters, "There. You're done now. _Stupid girl._ "

"Hey!" Peeta admonishes from behind him, "Leave her alone."

The blonde boy walks past Thom with hard eyes and kneels down next to Katniss on the dusty floorboards. He moves a tentative hand towards her shoulders. Katniss shivers and turns her head slowly, gazing frigidly into Thom's eyes. It's enough to turn the room's climate to bitter winter and for Peeta to withdraw his outstretched hand carefully.

"I hate you," she grates darkly.

Thom stares back like it doesn't hurt. It _does_ hurt, only because he's heard it before, in this room.

"How could you just stand there and let it happen? You were watching the whole time. You would've sat back and let them kill him. You would've watched him bleed out –"

He opens his mouth to defend himself but her voice rises.

"You're filth! You're no better than them! You don't care at all whether he lives or not! You don't care about any other life than your own! You selfish scum, you –"

Thom shoves his hands in his pocket to keep from hitting her again and glances at Peeta, "You got this?"

He doesn't wait for a reply before he exits the tiny room. Ignoring Bristel and her husband's curious looks from the kitchen, he slips out the back door into the stinging snow. With his boot he sweeps slush off the first step and sinks down on his haunches. With his hands he palms his eyes until he sees colors pop and flare. With his mind he remembers.

When he finally comes inside, she is sleeping on the lumpy floor mattress, eyes fluttering and breath hitching in dreamland. He has to check to make sure Peeta and her mother are preoccupied with Gale before he rakes his back against the doorjamb, clutching his ribs until he can breathe again because _cripes, she looks so young_ , and he remembers the seven hells he went through the last time he watched a dark-haired girl sleeping in this room. Even the way she groans a little, holding her belly with sleepy-drugged-drapey arms reminds him of _her_ , of when losing _her_ seemed like the worst thing that could happen in this world.

And it was.

* * *

It's hard to wade through the Town's grape-vine of Seam slander without gleaning juicy accounts of their legendary temper. But such is the way of the Town. They plant whatever bits of coal they find in their seed bag and cultivate it into a fruitful crop. Then when the yield is heavy and full, they crush it between their tattling teeth and toast the woes of their neighbors. The drink of partiality is sweetest when shared amongst friends of the garden variety.

Peeta can remember the weeks following the birth of the Overtons' second son. He was born with a seam running from his gums to his nose, fated with the permanent sneer of a hissing alley cat. He remembers how the Town women would wait in line at the bakery, murmuring under their breath, _Let the Capitol have him. May he be reaped, Snow bless us._

But the fact remained that such a flaw had been associated with the pale-skinned, yellow-haired faction, so naturally, they hunted for a scapegoat.

_See that one grazing on the hill there? Yes, that one – the dark one with the mischievous silver eyes. He came in the middle of the night and ate all our pasture grass. Ate it all up, can you believe it? Have you ever seen such a horrid creature?_

_And the truth of the matter is, this boy is not ours – not wholly, you see. It was that one, the dark one, who came and took advantage of this woman. It was the coal that did this. Not us. The boy is not one of us. He will never be one of us. He is cursed by_ Them _. They did this._

It was the polite thing to do to smile and nod, to placate the old women. But soon the young girls began preaching it and couples quoted it as something holy, and the entirety of the town aimed to evangelize their blame like the Second Rebellion.

Soon their blame became a prophecy, for one night, Mrs. Overton left the quaint Town bungalow she shared with her husband and children, and crossed the boundary where the cobblestones turn to torn gravel and the people are as dark as their quarter. She left a swaddled squirming curse outside the gates of the Community Home and the Peace Patrol found her two days later, dangling from the District fence. She was snarled in the sparking electric wiring. She was blackened head to toe. She was covered in coal dust.

Standing in the barebones bedroom of Katniss Everdeen's house, he watches warily the interactions between the tiny spitfire girl and her tall, imposing companion. He's not sure what to make of her wrathful words and frantic fights. He's not sure how much is warranted to shock and how much is a deeply ingrained defect that makes night brawls a popular pastime in this part of Twelve. He's not sure how far he's been brainwashed by the people who raised him, kissed him, wrestled him. He's not sure about a lot of things now.

But in the instant Thom slaps her and calls her _stupid girl_ , Peeta knows she doesn't deserve it, _any_ of it. If he can make up for the sins of his people, he will do it now as a penitent blockade between them.

It's a relief when Thom leaves the room. Katniss' verve sputters out quickly and she curls inward like smoke from a wet fire, shuddering. Peeta swaddles her in dry blankets from the foot of the metal bed and follows her to the mattress in the corner, spilling with hay and goose down that breathes delicate milk feathers when she collapses on the edge.

She won't respond to his questions – her teeth are chattering too hard to speak anyhow. While he has no desire to return so soon to the gore of the kitchen, he certainly isn't going to strip her out of her sopping clothes. Especially with her injuries, though he's not certain that's the extent of his reasoning. He leaves her with promises of a hot drink for her and a hot brick for the bed.

Mrs. Everdeen is packing snow onto Gale's back in level handfuls, pressing cold deep into the yawning stripes. Without looking up, she directs Peeta to the hanging tin mugs and the loose pine sprigs drying from the rafters.

"Put this in hers," she says after he pours steaming _glugs_ of water over the dried needles. She holds out a capful of dark spackled syrup with bright blushing hands.

"What is it?"

"A tincture. It'll numb the pain and help her sleep."

Peeta lets it flow molasses-slow and takes the two mugs in hand as he steals back to the bedroom. Katniss doesn't blink when he places the tea in her hands, only looks down with a knot between her brow as his thumb brushes against her thin, brown fingers. He's surprised by the number of scars and callouses he discovers, and lets her eyes linger on his own disfigurements and blemishes while she takes the cup. It's hard to hide similarities, yet even harder to notice them.

Peeta sits with his back against the wall to cultivate a safe distance between their sprawling limbs. He imagines they are like radish sprouts whose roots will grow gnarled and knotted if they are planted too close together.

She watches him as he takes a scorching sip of his tea, sputters, and blows on the surface to cool it down. Tentatively, she takes a ponderous sip of her own. Bringing her other hand up to the warm tin, she pulls her knees to her chest and the mug to her lips. A swallow, a sip – she carries her eyes to his with the coyness of a fleeting smile, a sporadic stab of sun, a secret, slanting tear.

The silence is comfortable and easy as they drink, but when Peeta sucks on the last bits of his pine tips, he finds he's not quite ready to let her go. It's pathetically ironic, but he doesn't want to leave her coal-rimmed eyes or her rough and ravaged hands. Even when he feels the imminent ache of the Townspeople's simmering disapproval, he remains. Because there's something about this girl, with her scars and callouses, that emboldens him. After a lifetime spent in a cage, clipped of his wings and forced to hold his tongue, he feels the stirrings of a song in his throat.

"You know, my friend Delly always used to read me her tea dregs when she was little – she said a nanny taught her mother eons ago and its stayed in the family ever since. She would tell me these intricate little stories that the leaves had whispered to her while she drank. She never could tell the same story twice, though."

He pauses. They're neither of them children anymore, and the events of today might have just graduated them to adulthood, but he throws a penny to the well anyway, "Do you want me to read you my leaves?"

Katniss stiffens, then nods weakly, serious eyes somber.

"Well, they were whispering about this couple – a boy and a girl, who lived in a horrible terrible place where there was never enough to eat. The house was full of drafts and the children were habitually gobbled up by monsters that came both day and night. They had lived there all their lives, terrified of when the food would run out or the house would blow down or the monsters would get hungrier. Until one day, the girl said to the boy, _Let's run away together. We'll live in the forest like deer and eat berries off the bushes in summer. And when winter comes around, we'll burrow into the mossy mountainside and blow hot breaths on each other to keep warm._

"The boy agreed immediately, so the two friends ventured out into the forest. A short distance from their town, they came across a simple shack, small enough for them to lay in at night without being afraid of the dark hiding in the corners. They entered in and found a long table set with gleaming gold silverware and crystal glasses filled with the sweetest cider and endless dishes of rich, costly food: roast beef, stewed plums, soft rolls, cheese and butter, and every type of jam imaginable. After they had eaten fit to bursting, the table presented desserts of every kind: cakes and pies, frosted cookies, figs and oranges, and melted chocolate to drizzle over everything.

"The pair could hardly believe their luck, but they were so full, they wished for nothing more than a soft pillow to lay their heads on and a warm blanket to cover them. Magically, the table disappeared and a mountainous bed took its place, with twenty mattresses and one hundred golden pillows. They had to climb a ladder to get to the top, where invisible servants tucked them in and sang lullabies as they fell asleep. They dreamt that night of warm clothes to dress in before they continued their journey: a jacket with less patches and a scarf with no holes. When they woke, the most magnificent fur cloaks hung over the chairs, with wool ear muffs and leather gloves that stretched to their elbows. They were delighted and stayed another night to feast and sleep.

"The second night, they dreamt of little songbirds to wake them at dawn. Just as the sun's light was yawning over the hilltops, a choir of mockingjays perched outside their windows and sang the festival songs of their people to rouse them.

"They lived at this shack for many months, eating their fill, sleeping in a warm bed, and never once thinking of the child-eating monsters. And each day, the house gave them everything they could dream of and better, for that was the house's design. But one day, the girl dreamt of her family, her brothers and sisters whom she had left behind in the village. She missed them more than anything. When morning came, she was overjoyed and ran outside to meet them, but –"

"Peeta."

Her voice rasps like a rusted hinge. The rose in his cheeks betrays his surprise, and his delight, at her address. He didn't even know she knew his name.

"Peeta," her lashes are heavy with sleep and her head lies facing him against the soft lumps of the mattress, "I know you put sleep syrup in my tea."

Immediately, Peeta is filled with regret and guilt and something oddly nurturing that bubbles out as he rushes closer, babbling, "I know, I'm sorry, I just wanted to help, I'm so sorry… I'm sorry."

Her eyes are closed already, flitting fitfully with her shallow breaths. All Peeta can do is stroke her hair away from her face and apologize again, and again, and again. Maybe when she wakes up, this will all be a reverie that she forgets, but Peeta will dream this on loop, a relentless circle of what might have been. He knows better than to dream of reality.

* * *

When Katniss returns to the waking world, she is sticky with sweat and syrupy sleep and there's a tightness in her chest like cold leather cracking. She hasn't felt this way since she was eleven years old, when her father died, when she would silently cry herself to sleep on a belly aching with hunger and emotion.

It feels impossibly hard to move even the smallest muscle, so she raises herself tenderly on her forearms, ignoring the black and blue throbbing of her bruised back and elbows. Her head swims like a deep-water sculpin and her eyes flounder away from the light. She hears the clanging of a lantern being hung from the kitchen rafters and cringes at the streams of bright candle-glow winking through the cob in the wall seams. With a jolt, she scrabbles for the chamber-bucket to retch long, dry heaves into. The tea comes up sour and sharp.

She hangs shivery and wary over the bucket a little longer before she whispers, "Time to get up, Katniss."

With flimsy fawn-legs, she stands and stumbles over to the corner dresser, pulling open a drawer and fumbling for a dry shirt. Her sopping shirt clings to her, a second skin of blood and snow and sweat. She rips the sides while taking it off and doesn't care. Probably not even Hazelle could have erased the crimson stains.

Standing frozen in the small bedroom, Katniss quakes a little at the gore around her abdomen, all smeared carmine around a cramping crater. She takes a deep, tremulous breath and whispers, "Get dressed, Katniss. It's time to get dressed."

The shirt goes on over her head with a few small cries as she _stretches_ and _pulls_.

"Now you have to move, Katniss. _Walk!_ "

Her feet are creaky against the floor. Someone had taken her boots and wet socks, and now her toes scratch blue and clammy against the splintered planks. She scrapes the tumble-down door open and peeks outside.

It's a surprise to find the two boys still here. Peeta and Thom sit in the living room together clutching hot bowls of broth and watching the fat ferocious flurries beat boisterously on the window.

It's almost comical in the way they contrast each other: Peeta with his pale skin and flaxen hair looks like he belongs in the snow, like the ice and rime would frost him with a million sparkling diamonds and leave his image on the morning windows. But Thom is warm and brooding and dark, like an untended hearth fire, deceiving in his heat.

Her mother catches her eye in the kitchen, "You're up. I was just coming in to check on you."

She dries her hands on a rough kitchen linen and beckons her towards the table.

 _The table._ Gale lay so quiet on the rough-hewn counter that Katniss has almost forgotten the morning's proceedings. Looking at him now, eyes closed but chest gasping erratically and neck strained like a downed goose, she remembers how rapidly the day has fallen apart. From Vick scraping his knee on the walk to school and riding on Gale's shoulders, fussing over the tear in his last pair of pants, to Gale's tightlipped disclosure of his future intentions: taking advantage of the junior mine enlistments. She remembers, then, how the cover of the woods around them hadn't helped to quell her fears or soften her footsteps as she ran away. _The bread, the whip, the gun, the knife –_ she suffers all over again the loss and the guilt and the pain.

"Katniss." Her mother's voice draws the stares of the boys, but Katniss can't tear her eyes from Gale. Though herb-fleckled snow hides the worst of his injuries, there are still plenty to inspect: the double handprints on each arm, the welts along his ribs, his eyes wandering frantically under his lids as if to escape the pain. If he were awake, she would tell him running doesn't work. She seems to be the expert in that area.

"Katniss," her mother touches her arm and she flinches, drawing back a hand she hadn't known had been drifting to Gale's cheek.

"Sit down," she nods at the stool and Katniss takes a seat mechanically. A bowl of warm water is set on the floor next to her as Mrs. Everdeen rings out a clean rag and dabs along her daughter's brow. If Katniss closes her eyes, she can pretend this is a motherly gesture, but she's run from her problems enough already today. So instead, she gazes straight into the healer's eyes, watching her analyze, assess, appraise. She treats her with all the clinical professionalism of a Capitol medic, emotional as a sterile needle.

The rag wanders over the gash across her brow and Katniss recoils from the sting.

"Don't move," her mother scolds, and holds her chin between her fingers. She smooths a glossy translucent sap that Prim squeezed from marshmallow roots over her gash, then stands back to admire her work. "I don't even think we'll need stitches for that one. Now, let's look at this bullet bite."

Katniss pulls the bottom of her blouse up and the boys turn their backs deliberately, though at this point, Katniss would be willing to bathe right in the middle of the living room as long as she could wash away the horrors and chills of the day. She wants it gone, but it can't be and she knows that, and it burns like regret.

She grits her teeth as the rag drags over the wound – a little snake hole going in just above the right wing of her hipbone, and an exit where it shot out the back. Her mother sighs, pursing her lips.

"Through and through. You're lucky they only carry drill guns here. The rubber bullets don't have as much bite."

Regardless, a marble of colors blooms around the two punctures and Katniss hisses and chokes when vinegar is flushed through them, gripping the table with bony white knuckles and blood-rimmed nails.

"Stitches," her mother murmurs, darting a needle nimbly into the fire, "You want some sleep –"

"No," Katniss spits, breathless from the lingering sting.

"You have to hold still," she warns, but pulls Katniss' hips closer into the light of the kitchen window.

The hot needle crimps neat little rows of gut string over front and back, and a coarse green paste that smells sweetly of oatstraw and comfrey soothes the burning and pinching.

Katniss had jumped at her own reflection in the silver bedroom mirror and knew nothing her mother could do would magically erase the path of bruises, storm clouds sweeping down the side of her face and across her jaw, but already she felt the normalcy of control coming back to her. It was good to feel less pain and more power. It gave her an upper hand that she so desperately needed at the moment. It gave her an extra edge that might make up for the absence of a hunting partner to watch her back. It gave her an opportunity to right some wrongs, abate the guilt gnawing at her stomach, redeem herself to Gale. He didn't deserve this. And he certainly didn't deserve her. What kind of a hunting partner was she, to leave his side the instant fear presented itself in tangible form?

She slides the stool to the head of the table and keeps a vigilant watch over Gale's writhing form covered in a glistening sheen of misery. Together, they will overcome this. Together they will share the pain. She will be strong enough for the both of them. She won't leave him again. This she knows.

As much as their shared pain is harsh and wild and vicious, the house is grey and hushed and still.

And then the door raps loud and bright-rattling-the-sun.

Katniss jumps from the stool in the same moment that Thom moves cautiously towards the door. They meet eyes and share gazes. They both know who it is.

"They can't have him," Katniss bursts.

Thom turns grim and ashen, like his fire has been untended for too long.

"They're done with 'im," he nods at the table, then glances back at her, "S'not Gale they'll be lookin' for."

He puts a heavy hand on the wobbly doorknob and pulls slowly, opening the door just enough for Katniss to see the flash of white-on-white uniform. Thom braces his shoulders in the doorway, exchanges a smattering of low growls, and turns around, shutting the door with his eyes downcast. When he looks up, Katniss feels the weight of his concern full on and watches his grief-honed wall of defenses collapse in a hundred broken shards, giving way to something viscerally connecting: fear.

But she had vowed to be strong; she had vowed to stay by Gale's side, so she doesn't run when the boy before her can only say three words:

"It's for you," he croaks.

Oh, how the world crumbles terrible about them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The purpose of these little crumbs is to give you a perspective that you would not otherwise see in just one character's point of view – little holes in the big loaf, so to speak.
> 
> In regards to the configuration of the Everdeens' house, I imagine that, due to Mrs. Everdeen's healing business, they would have tried to make the house as open as possible, something like an old general hospital where there are no obstructions of view and the space can be maximized much more easily. What I'm picturing is a regular coal shanty with all the interior walls taken down to make one big room. That way Mrs. Everdeen can line up cots, keep her eyes on many patients at once, and move quickly between them. That being said, the regular commissioned shanty is no bigger than a living room and dining room combined. And of course, the girls have a tiny bedroom in the back where they can sleep, change, bathe in peace no matter the crowd.
> 
> Oregano, thyme, yarrow, and elm are all plants that help to reduce inflammation and infection, slow bleeding and promote blood clots, clean the blood, and expedite healing processes.
> 
> I really wanted to show Peeta here questioning his own preconceptions of the Seam characters. Being raised in a racist, prejudiced Town leaves him feeling confused and guilty about what he "believes", especially when some of the things are true (though largely exaggerated), such as the Seam temper. Of course, Peeta being Peeta, he acknowledges the existence of a partiality within and strives to correct it. Note also, that the Seam people are not inherently "angry" people. The roots of their rage are circumstantial, meaning their situation (discrimination, low wages, high death rates, starvation, etc.) angers them, and without change, they will not be happy.
> 
> A deep-water sculpin is a fresh-water fish that resides on the bottom of lakes. They can be found in the Appalachian Mountains, where District 12 is thought to be located.
> 
> I imagine the peacekeepers would use rubber bullets for two reasons: one, District 12 is the furthest district from the Capitol, therefore, the cost of shipping real bullets and larger guns would be exorbitant. Also, they weren't exactly expecting a riot at the whipping. If they had, I'm sure they would have been armed with sprays and shields and more 'keepers. Don't forget, too, that any type of gun is a bit of an upgrade from the regular batons they carry.
> 
> Marshmallow root is a mucilage, meaning, when extracted, it releases a gluey substance containing flavonoids which reduce inflammation and induce phagocytosis (its cells eat bacteria and dead skin cells, encouraging overall healing).
> 
> Oatstraw helps to rebuild the outer layer of skin and comfrey does much the same thing, as well as guard against scar tissues.
> 
> See you in the comments!
> 
> Much love,  
> theory of mice


	4. Day 1 - Darius

_**Wednesday, 3**_ _ **rd** _ _**week of November, 73rd**_ _ **Winter Anno Nix** _

_**Darius, pt. 1:** _

That she arrives is not in itself surprising to Darius. If he were to rank today's events from predictable to shit-yourself-shocking, Katniss' arrival wouldn't even make it on the list. Which is fine. The list is much too long anyways for a single Wednesday afternoon. He's wondered four times already if being intoxicated on duty is worth the night shifts he'll be dispensed as punishment. And it's only 11am.

The fact of the matter is, District 12 is not a surprising place. Sure, there are the black markets and illegal whores and wild corruption on every side, but there is a structure and a pattern and a shape to everything that Darius has come to expect. Like the constant clanking of the mine shafts, there is a consoling truth in the ugliness of the circumstances, that nothing has changed and nothing will change – even if it should.

So, no. It does not surprise him that Katniss Everdeen, in all her tiny turbulent glory, steps in to save the boy's back.

What does surprise him is the splattering of said boy's blood all over his garrison window, feathered in perfect ruby plumes with each stroke of the Keeper's cuff. There isn't even a rill of light to the morning yet, but blushing welts bloom full and heavy across the horizons of Gale's cheeks.

"Cragging stone – what are you doing?" Darius moves to pull the officer off the boy, ignoring his three cohorts flocked together, bloody talons and thorny beaks. "Don't you know who this is? Ore of hell, Minos, have you gone mad?"

The ruckus-riled officer shrugs, spiting in his direction, "Followin' orders, Tinderbox. Go start a fire elsewhere."

Darius bristles at the nickname. Letting the hot simmer of resentment ruffle his ego, he maneuvers his body in a gallant attempt to block the next blow. Years of training tell him it is hopeless, but years of bantering with this boy under the crass glares of Hob lamps and stall venders tell him it is necessary.  _And right_ , but that has never been a part of his job description.

The fist hits him brazenly across the jaw, exactly as he predicted. On the ensuing tide of pain, Darius shoves up and out, a violent thrust that sends Minos reeling against the opposite wall. His cronies fidget restlessly with gore-stained cudgels, eyeing their burly comrade for approval. It won't matter that Darius ranks two titles above them, nor that he's got Cray's ear when he listens – four against one is never a fair match.

He slips a hand under Gale's arm and helps him stand. The boy's a good fighter. Darius has broken up enough of his scraps to recognize the ireful roots of a hard-lined hero. Men like these begin as hapless seeds, nurtured slowly by some despotic rain, and grow into deep-rooted oaks with proud limbs built for battle-scars. It's not their fault their branches lure the lumberjacks with eager axes. Their wood burns best.

Even now, collapsed against the brick wall and coughing blood through every orifice, he manages to look at Darius with one good eye, bold and daring.

 _He would have made an exemplary Peacekeeper,_  Darius thinks wryly to himself,  _a Capitol Peacekeeper, maybe for the Game Rooms. Maybe for the President himself._

And a part of him delights in the reversal of situations and the unfairness of everything despite.

"Oi, Matchface, interference of Capitol directives is a punishable crime. You gonna step aside and let me follow commands, or do I have to hit your pretty little face again?" Minos's gloves creak louder than his voice.

But Darius gives a disdainful little laugh that sounds deceptively confident. "And whose commands would that be? I trust Cray's taste for turkey much more than your waste of words any day. He'd never condone this."

"Maybe not," a voice rasps behind him, "But I do."

As a man stalks out of the barrack's alley door, Darius recalls the pearl-plumed egrets who haunt the district's skies in spring. With his crisp Peacekeeper attire, bleached and bloodless, this stranger announces his foreign-ness louder than any mine blast. The regimentals of District 12 are shades of grey: the longer one is posted here, the greyer one gets, with Old Cray a black pearl amongst them all.

The man struts on wiry legs towards Daruis. "Do you know what else is a punishable crime? Poaching. As is illegal possession of stolen goods and any attempts to sell such goods to Capitol attendants. This yardbird here is guilty on all accounts. All that's left for him to do is confess his crimes and accept his punishment."

Gale stirs beside the wall, "I didn't –"

Minos drives a fist into his stomach, buckling him speechless.

"Let him talk," the gaunt peacekeeper says, turning his angular face towards Gale. This man is all corners, sharp and cuttingly precise.

"I didn't," he pants past the pain and spurts blood, "I didn't poach anything. I was making a delivery. Cray knew. He knew – I was coming."

The peacekeeper saunters over, beady eyes amused by his victim's misery. He pulls Gale up by a fistful of hair and presses a forearm against his throat.

"Pity that wasn't the confession I was looking for,  _boy_. But let's see if I can persuade you otherwise. Officer Arris, identify this criminal."

The fragile officer hidden in the doorway contorts his pock-marked face into an awkward apology before stuttering, "G-Gale Hawthorne. I believe."

Darius shuts his eyes and curses mentally. Of course, Cliff Arris would be pulled into this: the whore's son from District 2 who's afraid of his own piss tinkling in the bucket at night. He hasn't kept a full bottle of miner's brew down in the three weeks he's been stationed here.

"Details on his family."

Gale's eyes turn to wet river rocks. He struggles a bit for air.

"Uh…" Arris squints at the ledger in his hand, "Father deceased, mother employed as a washerwoman, two brothers aged thirteen and nine, sister aged three. Shanty 47, sector 9."

The forearm presses harder. "I wonder how they'd like a visit from the Capitol, eh?" He snarls at Minos and his crew, "You four, escort the Hawthorne family into a private cell. Don't bother with the spacious one – they won't be staying long."

Minos picks up his broken baton from the cobblestones and motions for the others to follow him, away from the slowly suffocating boy and his spitting assailant.

"Here's how we'll play, you worthless filth." Spew flies from needle-thin lips, "You confess and your family goes free, or I'll let you watch as I carve them up one by one, until there's nothing left but fingers and earlobes for you to keep as a token of the Capitol's justice."

Gale glares wicked hot into his assailant's black eyes. Darius doesn't breathe.

" _I'm not bluffing_."

His gaze flashes to the five white uniforms tramping down the alley. Dawn's first embers catch like wildfire on their silver switchblades.

Five more seconds and Darius' throat burns while Gale's lips turn blue.

Seven. Arris looks like he's guzzled ten bottles of miner's brew.

Nine. Minos is almost at the end of the alley.

Twelve. The snow is swooping, the crows are croaking, everything slows and stings and–

" _Wait._ "

Gale's strangled plea is barely audible. The silver-haired man retracts his arm and lets him tumble to the ground, choking on air.

" _I confess_ … I confess. Call them back, I confess."

A crawling smile, bleak as the morning air, creeps like hoar-frost onto the peacekeeper's face. He barks down the corridor, "Get back here." Eight boots shatter ice underfoot. "Tie this criminal up in the town square. He deserves a proper whipping, this one."

Darius' mouth gapes, incoherent as a snapped-neck bird before he sputters, "You-you can't do that. You don't have the authority – only Cray dispenses punishments."

At this, the foreigner turns to Darius.

Minos and his company pause in morbid curiosity.

"What's your name, officer?"

"It's  _Lieutenant_. Lieutenant Ashlar."

The smile cracks wider. "Well,  _lieutenant_ , allow me to introduce myself. My name is CommanderRomulus Thread and I have every authority to dispense punishments on whomever I see fit. Including lieutenants."

Darius' eyes pull. He fights against the jagged bite of worry and takes a breath.

"Where's Cray?"

He knows, of course, where he is. He's had his schedule memorized since he was twenty-years old in a snow-white uniform and shoe-shined boots.

_5:46am. Leaves his private shack in the Seam quarter and rewards each dark, defiled waif a silver piece each._

_6am. Wanders to the black market to buy two bottles of white liquor and steal three kisses from the pig-man's squealing daughter._

_6:22am. Drinks one bottle in the mule shelter. Pulls a dagger on anyone who disturbs him._

_10am. Change of shift. Stumbles back to barracks. Drinks second bottle in office, locked._

But listening now, the groaning bed springs of last night's evening patrol do not harmonize with Cray's drunken crooning. Instead, the slam of his office door is replaced by vulgar cursing and splintering wood.

Arris jumps out of the doorway as a rabble of Peacekeepers drag Cray outside, deflecting his inebriated attempts at self-defense.

"Commander Cray," Thread crows tactlessly, "I apologize for this brief intrusion of your day. I assure you, all will be explained shortly."

He leans in close and wrinkles his nose against the sterile alcohol fumes, "In the meanwhile, however, you will not be needing this."

Nimbly, he plucks the Commander Peacekeeper's insignia, a golden Capitol seal crowned by twelve stars, and pins it to his own chest. "Take them both."

Nobody objects.

Darius stands dumbfounded while Cray is ushered towards Town, meek as a maiden being led to the whorehouse.

Minos grabs the scruff of Gale's shirt and hauls him upright. As they pass by, Gale looks up and catches Darius' eye, staring with all the earnestness of a weathered oak, steadfast to the end.

They herd him away with shoves and insults,  _Seam-scum_ ,  _coal cur_ ,  _bastard._  There seems to be an endless supply of cutting words with which these men have armed themselves. But Darius does not see a bloodied boy or convicted criminal. Instead, he beholds a tree full-reamed, its proud limbs hacked cruelly off and the broken trail of things unsaid crying  _wrong, wrong, wrong_  in sticky drops of sap.

* * *

It doesn't occur to him until later that he should be surprised she  _wasn't_  there.

A barracks visit from a certain raven-haired girl is as much a district drill as stabilizing mine collapses or burying tribute coffins. There are definite steps and procedures to follow, rules to respect, knuckles to fear should you stare too long.

Darius doesn't condemn his colleagues for gawking moon-eyed at the windows when she walks by. He might do the same if he hadn't experienced the sound of her laugh or the slip of smile in her eyes when he jokes with her. Still, celibacy is a Capitol-sworn oath and not even Old Cray is bold enough to break their vows so blatantly as to conduct his pleasures at the barracks. Any babe-faced officer can spot the prying eyes of the Capitol blinking steadily red in every garrison corner.

Of course, there are some places where the fall of Snow never settles. Places like the Hob and the slag heap, even the electrical shack, where dark girls flock like magpies in the cold. Birds with inky feathers and bashful little beaks that want nothing more than a night under the warmth of another man's wings. They are cheap and eager and plentiful, but none of them are Katniss.

The eldest Everdeen girl bears all the marks of a thoroughbred Seam woman: dark skin, black hair, flashing granite eyes. But with an elegance that would give District 5's geneticists wet-dreams, the clever observer can detect hints of her mother's exiled origins. From the endearing wisps of curl at her brow to the delicacy of her facial features, Katniss' slender figure contrasts the wide-set jaws and broadened hips which better-acclimated Seam women in their survival of life's constant demands. There was nothing beautiful about survival until Katniss came along.

She's a child still, really, and it bothers him that already men eye her with less than friendly glances. To them, she's nothing more than a challenge that can be won with a few tantalizing coins or a tight grip. Yet something restrains the urges of his comrades, apart from Gale Hawthorne's dependable fists.

Katniss possesses a graceful authority over the people she meets, imparts an unspeakable feeling of safety or assuredness that leaves you with the sickly-sweet aftertaste of hope, reminiscent of some childhood medicine. Miraculously, even the lewdest of the officers, even Cray himself, leaves her untouched.

She sells to Cray by herself. The first time Darius witnesses her routine, he peeks a second time, as much in shock as it is a chance to look at her again. She walks alone up the alley, single-handedly carting a turkey over her shoulder, and knocks brazenly on the alley-door of the garrison. He's only been in District 12 a few months, but it's enough to determine that she and the boy are inseparable. It is unsettling to see the young girl without him by her side, something akin to losing one's shadow.

Darius hurries the door open and stares at her. "What are you doing here?" he hisses.

She looks calmly back, as if he hadn't just teased her last night about the mathematical probability of eyeballs floating in her soup.

"I'm here fer Cray." She raises her eyebrows a little to settle her intent.

"For Cray?" He feels his chest tightening, because he hadn't thought, well he didn't expect, no one had told him to anticipate this and he was still reeling, really, from  _her_  death. He had finally found some normalcy here and was able to sleep a handful of nights without missing his family, his home, his…  _her_ , and this girl before him was helping him forget, or maybe making him remember, because they're the same, but different and…  _Great scree_. What is he supposed to do?

"Cray? You… you're not supposed to come here for... Craggum, how  _old_  are you?"

She only gazes steadily into his face, quipping, "You're new here. I'm lookin' fer Cray."

It isn't a question or a demand, but Darius knocks on Cray's office door nonetheless, hating himself when his voice falls flat and indifferent, a model example of the blind obedience the Capitol so applauds.

He averts his eyes when Cray approaches the door licking his lips, and hides in his barracks because he already knows why girls come looking for Cray. He'd heard rumors about their ages, but he hadn't imagined anything below fourteen – he hadn't imagined  _her_.

He's sitting on his bed with bile in his throat when he sees him: a flickering shadow outside the corner window, straight spine and fidgeting fists with triggers in his eyes as he peeks down the long brick alleyway. The boy.  _Her_  boy.

The door clanks shut and Cray slips to the galley with a burlap bundle cradled drunkenly in his arms, leaving feather footprints in his wake.

Chirrups of the duo's conversation seep through the window cracks.

"Got twelve coin – and I didn't even pluck 'im." Proud and gloating.

"I still don't like it." Wary and begrudging. "S'not worth the risk."

"You wouldn't say that if it were you. And he saw you around the corner, anyway. Not like you were bein' subtle."

"Well, neither was he, the way he looked at you."

She huffs, "He looked at the turkey more than anythin' else. Relax, Gale."

The boy responds with a resigned grunt, but his fingers crack from the tightness of his fists. At the end of the day, a coin is a coin and a turkey a turkey, and pride or affection have no hold in whether you live another day.

* * *

So, no. It does not surprise him that Katniss Everdeen, in all her elegant élan, steps in to save the boy's back.

What does surprise him is the strength with which the past echoes back, playing memories of another life, another crime, another boy. There's a million worlds rehearsing within his mind where only one should exist. But between the endless cosmos, he struggles to find enough air. All he hears is gasping.

It's for this reason that Darius hates the pitiful surprise he feels at Cray's demise. He's seen it a million times already. The fact that they share blood is condemning enough evidence of an abrupt and bitter end. Still, the warmth of his uncle's life seeping into the soles of his boots burns more than he anticipated.

And yet it's nothing compared to the boy.  _Cliff and stones_ , it aches. The look in his eyes is enough to ruin Darius. It stirs up childhood demons – nightmares of boys with death in their eyes; some who crave it senselessly, as if they are born to die in such a sickly lurid manner that the Capitolites feel bits of brain matter splat at them through the screen projectors; others who are bewildered by it up until the familiar stars dim. There is only one in Darius' memory who is expecting death – expecting Darius.

Now he adds one more boy to that list, because it is hard to ignore the grim salute to darkness in Gale's eyes that says,  _Hello, old friend, what took you so long?_

It cuts him with every  _snap_  of the whip, this smothered past. As much as he tries to repress the uprising of memories, he's ill-suited for the heat of a riot and finds himself slowly succumbing to the whisperings of the dead.

She is his undoing, the final stroke that renders him senseless. How he knows those determined eyes and that hand stretched out in desperation, the pleading,  _Stopstopstop_  –

"STOP!"

Time passes slower than he remembers. Or at least, he thinks he recalls a time when today is separate from yesterday and the conflict surrounding him has clear-cut villains and heroes. In this moment, it's hard to remember which he is and which he isn't.

The click of the gun reminds him well enough.

She stands there, letting the steely-eyed barrel of a .22 riot pistol stare her down. And she looks calmly back, as if she hadn't just challenged seventy-three years of meticulously controlled Capitol monocracy, small and blood-slicked in her partner's pools of life. She stands there as if nothing in any existing world could come between them – two dark orphans yoked by the same burden. And here, their final testimony: not even death will daunt them.

That, Darius supposes, is the uniqueness of Katniss Everdeen. She is so impulsively brave that others can't help but reciprocate her courage, if only to bask in the warmth of her fire. The square is pulsing with it:

A bakery boy struggles in the crowd and shouts her name.

A Seam boy, creeping carefully back to his miresome mines, halts and turns slowly back around.

A blaze-haired peacekeeper grips his commander's gory uniform and whispers warningly, "You have no idea, the effect she can have."

When he shoots, she is as radiant as the sun.

* * *

Five months before Darius was castigated a position in District 12, the Morey-Thompson mines erupted in the biggest event of firedamp known to Panem. They say the flames were visible from the town-square, high-arching and ascending like a hawk-cry sighting prey.

The children were in school. When Darius asks how many, the number is vague, an irrelevant amount. He imagines the mining children streaming out, a wave of grey eyes welled with fear, huddling in the schoolyard to catch a glimpse of the blaze. Already, most of them never expect to see their fathers again.

From the way the senior officers describe it, the mining accident was inconceivable. But there are a few, at least, who predicted a casualty at some point. There was something in the air, the winter weather, the way the workmen gaggled in groups before the pits opened every morning. Something in the way they watched one miner, in particular, eyeing him with all the respect of a true-born leader, anticipating his smallest gesture as if to one day surge forward and cry:

"No right! No justice!"

"Down with the peace!"

Today it is snowing. And the miners have finally revolted.

In a flurry of sooty wings and rattling beaks, the grimy flock of Seam folk, men and women alike, descend upon the Peacekeepers. They strike with all the savagery of maddened starlings, inky-black in their rage. The Peacekeepers, though the bigger of the species, quiver on fragile, stilted legs, futilely dodging the stones and rubble of their aggressors. Still, far-flung lumps of coal and slag mark targets on their pale uniforms. It would be comical to witness, had not Darius the same long legs and matching plumage, dreary white as an egret in mourning. He is the enemy here, the hunter hunted.

Head low and eyes roving, Darius rustles through the assembly of panicky officers. Arris' voice, a thin, reedy call some notes above the others, reaches his ears.

"Darius! Darius –"

The lines of white uniforms crash together as the miners meet them head on, bricks and fists a-swinging. Turmoil sews its rambling seeds and confusion flourishes. A cry from above draws Darius' attention to the rooftops, where nimble young starlings, too young yet to fly about, but dark and indignant all the same, have climbed the ramparts, hurling debris into the swirling whiteness below.

"Ashlar!" A shoulder locks next to his, armor clanking. Darius barely recognizes Arris – some well-aimed missile has struck his temple, streaming blood down his face and tinting his straggly blonde hair shades of rose. "You got a helmet, mate? I didn't figure we'd be doing much in the way of fighting…"

Above Arris' shouts, Minos' voice cuts through the ruckus like glass on marble, crunching, biting, sharp. The whipping post looms large.

"Hey, get away from there. You can't – "

Ten years of Capitol servitude have learned Darius the rule of speed over size, so it takes him two less breaths then it should to rip Arris' cudgel from his belt and race forward, swinging a wide arc at the back of Minos' head. It's a revolt of his own, he supposes, as the blunt bat strikes skull, that he turn his Capitol-honed skills against its own. But fitting, too, he thinks, while digging his fingers hungrily beneath the collarbone, chewing on sensitive nerves until the blood flow weakens. Hadn't the Capitol done the same to him?

As Minos topples to the ground, a scrawny Seam boy looks up from sawing Gale's ropes, blood licking his hands along the sharp edges of his tool. Deep in Darius' consciousness, another boy asks:

_I knew you'd come… I knew you'd come. What took you so long?_

He pulls out the knife at his waist, suddenly needle-tipped and reproachful, and nearly staggers with the weight of its memory. The knife leaves his grasp with a neat throw. Words leave his throat with the voices of the past.

' _You shouldn't let them see you like this.'_

"Best not let them see you with that –"

' _Be quick about it then. Do it.'_

"– so be quick about it."

_I'll find you outside the garden then? Remember, we used to hide in the rain barrels._

"I'll find it in a powder barrel outside the Hob."

When the mob swallows up the sight of Katniss easing Gale's body to the ground, delicate as a flower stooping with dew, the ghosts of latter years pull him to the familiar alleyways, crusted over with glacier diamonds.

He sits and catches his breath.

"Lieutenant Ashlar?" The voice comes haunting, sweetly soft.

"Lieutenant Ashlar. Are you –"

Darius scales the icy tentacles of the wall, rising startled to his feet. A sugar-faced Merchant girl perches hesitantly to his right, red cheeks kissing her pearly skin. To his relief, she seems firmly grounded in reality. If her steaming breaths sifting through the snowfall don't give her away, then her palpable apprehension of the turmoil just beyond certainly does.

"Are you all right, Lieutenant Ashlar? Are you hurt?" She sways uncertain in her place.

Darius nods once before he finds his voice. "I'm, uh, ahem. I'm fine, thank you. Are you… What are you doing here, Ms. Undersee? You shouldn't –"

She flitters towards him and pushes a cold, metal box into his arms, stammering with the brisk manner of a Capitol attendant's daughter and a foolish girl without her coat. "I need you to take these to her. You musn't tell my father, only take these and make sure he's alright."

Her blue eyes water as she dances backward, but Darius catches a frozen hand and stays her. "Hold there! You can't be walking by yourself. I'll escort you back to –"

She shakes her curls, steeping the air with heated hair appliances and wallpapered rooms. "I walked here by myself, didn't I?" she says fiercely, "Just take these to the Everdeens and keep it to yourself."

She leaves behind a trail of furtive footsteps.

Swearing, Darius creaks open the box's rusty hinges to peer inside. A handful of tiny translucent vials, crystalline etched with chemical symbols, sleep like winter peepers atop a snowy, satin cloth.

He recognizes the morphling almost immediately, though in all his years, he hasn't seen a medicine of equal grade anywhere near District Twelve. Painkillers are manufactured in Six, where, after filtering through the factory's addicts who swallow vials whole and regurgitate their contraband at home, the pharmaceuticals are distributed to the Capitol first and then the Career Districts. As the disappointing step-child of President Snow, District Twelve has no chance of obtaining such leisurely expensive drugs, not even the Mayor.

Darius tucks the smuggled goods into his armor and vacates to the Seam, ducking into doorways and snaking through sewers as he skirts the chaos of the square. He emerges breathless and dismayed at the scene laid out before him.

Along the puckered gusset of Town and Seam, several teams of Peacekeepers are busily nailing wooden house slats together to form rickety barricades. The hedge families, those who live forever kissing the feet of their Merchant neighbors, watch desolately in the streets as their homes are demolished piece by piece. A mother calls out somewhere close.

"Please! Please, we have nowhere to go! My children will freeze to death. Have you no pity? Please, I beg you! Let us be!"

Darius slinks behind the wails of her dark-haired children, all three of them owl-eyed, howling in the cold. The oldest girl, a grim little owlet no older than ten, wrestles her baby brother, barefooted and screeching with hunger.

He feels shamefaced for using their misfortune as camouflage, but he's relieved, too, to be trading their piercing distress for the Seam's shushing stillness. He gets lost among the shanties and arrives at the Everdeens by accident. But then, it is hard to ignore the carmine tears decorating the porch steps. He knocks synchronically with his scattered heartbeat.

Voices percolate through the frail walls before the knob judders and the door gapes just enough to fit the scrawny shoulders of the boy from the square. He stares at Darius with eyes that would curse if they spoke. Surprisingly, his first words are not profanities.

"What d'you want." He orders the question, demands an answer.

"I need to speak with Katniss Everdeen. She lives at this residence." A phrase formulated with all the professionalism of a dutifully detached Peacekeeper.  _Perfect_.

" 'bout what?" The door squeezes tighter.

"Private matters, nothing that concerns you."

The Seam boy glares darkly.

Darius sighs. "Listen, is she capable of coming to the door? If not, I'll go in myself."

At this the bitter youth shuts the door forcefully. Briefly, Darius thinks he might be denied his request and left to stand on the porch for the remainder of the day. But now the knob trembles again and there she is, pale and wobbly with flower-petal bruises unfurling. Yet that stubborn gaze stands firm.

Her scowl falters when she sees him. "Darius?" She quickly draws the door closed and folds her arms against the cold. "What are you doing here?" she hisses.

"I, uh, I just…" he realizes too late that he hasn't prepared anything to say.  _I'm sorry? Where were you this morning? Is he dead?_

"Are you okay?" he blurts.

She deadpans her face, though her gaze still flashes angry and bright. "Why wouldn't I be?" she spits, "I wasn't the one who got flailed within an inch of my life."

Darius shakes his head wryly, "No, that's right. You were just the one to get shot. I told him there'd be a riot if he hurt you."

Katniss' hand finds the bandage bullet wound and winces discreetly. She looks down. "Did you know? About the Head?"

"No. No, of course not. They didn't tell anyone – not even Cray. If I had known…" Darius isn't quite sure what he would've done if he had known.

She nods, stiff and unreadable, as snow swirls around the porch. His throat swells with emotion, but there are not enough words to speak.

Gradually, the morphling case grows cold against his skin and he brandishes it hastily, explaining, "The Undersee girl gave this to me. For Gale."

Katniss' expression creases with confusion. "What is it?" she asks, staring at the glass vials and their tapering needles.

"Morphling. It's a Capitol painkiller. I had no idea District 12 got shipments of this – it's outrageously expensive, even in the Career Districts. I can't even fathom the distribution cost the Mayor must have paid to get it here."

Katniss bites her lip, contemplating the gift. "Madge gave this to you?" she inquires suspiciously.

Darius raises his eyebrows, "Do you know her?"

She confirms with a stern nod, then adds more gently, "We sell her strawberries in the spring."

He knows he shouldn't say it, that's she's sensitive about these things and it isn't based in any truth. But the tensions of the day fall off him in large flakes of callous sarcasm and relentless teasing. It has always been his way.

"She must have quite a taste for strawberries."

There. Her face sours at the implication and it feels like last week, when she was balanced on Sae's counter, her braid in his hand and her eyes rolling at his jokes. Until he recognizes  _her_  in the laughter, the dimpled smile, the way she tilts her head starry-eyed. So, he bites the jugular just to see her squirm. He says something like:  _You should pay me for one of my kisses, you know. Green-muffler over there did – two rabbits. I'll discount you one since it's your first._  And then she squirms and the boy bristles and Sae snorts, and he is satisfied that nothing reminds him of  _her_  in that moment.

Finally, Katniss meets his eyes again, bridled. "They shouldn't see you here. Probably get you in trouble."

A grimace crosses Darius' face as he touches the tender discoloring around his chin. "I already am, I expect." Her brows pull down. "I tried to stop them. Before…"

Clear understanding softens her features. For a moment, she stares at him with ponderous eyes. Then, reverently, solemnly, she traces the fist-shaped welt on his jaw with tender, scarred fingers, trembling a bit at the meaning of it all. She swallows thickly and captures his gaze in hers, murmuring hoarsely, "Thank you… Darius."

He is too stunned to respond. Instead, he gapes a little at her intensity before backing slowly down the steps, only to slip on the last one, shattering the spell with comical abruptness. Nodding dutifully to her, he remembers his patrol knife somewhere at the bottom of a powder barrel. His voice carries over his shoulder, "Tell your friend he can keep the knife."

The raven-haired girl shakes her head. "It's not for him."

With a strength that flows from the deepest caverns of his mind, he answers, "Me, neither."

The day's ghosts bubble up, straining against the white bars of his uniform until he feels it  _rip_  and  _stretch_  as they break free, smothering him with their familiar haunts and predictable mementos. When the Capitol-crafted shell of a Peacekeeper falls like so many birds in a thunderstorm, Darius thinks he can see the little quarry boy of a decade-past life scampering about the skeleton of him, exploring the bones of what he might be.

_Overproof._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a curser, myself, in real life, so I've tried to give Darius, who grew up among crude, foul-mouthed men (who did fouler things with their bodies) a regional vernacular for swearing – one that didn't involve too many actual swear words. All of these words are derived from District 2 masonry/stone terms:
> 
> Cragging Stone – crag is a steep, rugged cliff or rockface
> 
> Ore of Hell – ore is a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted
> 
> Great Scree – scree is a collection of broken rock fragments at the base of crags, mountain cliffs, volcanoes or valley shoulders that has accumulated through periodic rockfall from adjacent cliff faces
> 
> Craggum – derived from cragged, which means a steep rugged mass of rock projecting upward or outward
> 
> Cliff and stones – well, this one's obvious
> 
> Cliff Arris gets his name from the masonry term arris – a natural or applied line on the stone from which all leveling and plumbing are measured.
> 
> Darius' last name is Ashlar, which means an individual stone that has been worked until squared or the masonry built of such stone. It is the finest stone masonry unit, generally cuboid, mentioned by Vitruvius as opus isodomum, or less frequently trapezoidal. ~ Wikipedia
> 
> Also, you can now go visit me on tumblr (theoryofmice . tumblr . com) where I post chapter previews and other story/writing related goodies! I would love to answer any questions or thoughts you might have! And as always, the comments are open to you!
> 
> Much love,
> 
> theory of mice


	5. Day 1 - Rory

_**Wednesday, 3**_ _ **rd**_ _**week of November, 73**_ _ **rd**_ _**Winter Anno Nix**_

_**Rory, pt.1:** _

From the moment Leevy arrives in the school yard, standing on tiptoes to scan the cloud of school children kicking up ash, Rory knows something is wrong. It's in the way Leevy holds one hand above her brow, the other gripping her coat tightly against the windswept snow. Or the way she searches a little too frantically for siblings he knows she doesn't have. When she catches Rory's gaze across the school yard, he sees it in the way she beckons him with dirty, trembling hands, stained a criminal crimson. But most of all it's in the way she refuses to meet his eyes thereafter, ignoring the questions gleaming there.

He isn't so much troubled by the fact that Gale and Katniss are nowhere to be found. It happens sometimes – they'll get held up trapping or trading. On those occasions, Rory marches Prim and Vick by the Hob entrance, where Sae sends out little cups of broth to ease their waiting. Only once Gale and Katniss have emerged with bags full of barters do they ramble home together, scampering like blackberry brambles around the strong stems of their providers.

It's an unspoken rule that they never go home without the other. In the same way that the wraith-white egrets feel an instinctive pull to Twelve's smoggy mires, Rory and his siblings, Prim included, suffer a similar devotion to their surrogate parents. It's not optimal. The obvious effects of tragedy pollute the once sparkling fens of family structure as much as the district's toxic runoff muddies the surrounding everglades with slag. Still, they wade knee-deep in boredom and Hob-haze just to savor the reassuring gaits of their caretakers guiding them home. It's an illness of sorts, Rory's sure, but Mrs. Everdeen doesn't seem to have a cure-all for orphaned chicklets. They're hatched with long legs for a reason.

Naturally, it's when Rory begins to wonder at their excessive length that mire floods their corner of the pond with rampant force. But it's not the first time, so he reels just a little against the wave breaking over them before he catches Vick's hand in his, towing him towards their escort and calling to Prim, "Come on, she's waitin' for us."

He knows Prim tastes the bitter ash floating in the snowfall, the little sour note that whispers, _wrong, wrong, wrong_ into the crackling winter air. But Prim has never questioned things as strongly as he. She only nods softly and clasps her delicate fingers over Vick's elbow, anchoring herself to their little tugging knot.

Leevy shoves her hands in her pockets as they approach, tall and boyishly lanky just like her sister. The two Gannen sisters grew up in the Everdeens' sector. When their father grew too hunched for minework, they were reassigned a shanty next to the mule shed, damp and suffused with animal pong. Rory doesn't think he could stand living in the smell, but the coins that Mr. Gannen brings home each week for tending the mine mules barely feeds his family. Sometimes it's the smaller evil over the biggest evil. And the biggest evil in District 12 is starving.

Besides, Mr. Gannen's smell is the least of his peculiarities. Rory helps him water the cart beasts every morning, filling rusty troughs with dank, sometimes moldy, hay. A persistent pandemic of rats always swarm out of the straw bins and Rory takes to sticking them on the sharp prongs of his pitchfork. Afterwards, Mr. Gannen gathers the corpses and slips them into his pockets, their twisting tails dangling out at such conspicuous angles, Rory can't help but wonder what he does with them. He's a hungry boy, so it's not hard to imagine.

Despite Mr. Gannen's eccentricity, Rory looks forward to working each morning, waking red-eyed with Gale – even before the miners. It makes him feel useful, grown, to be striding beside the strong, broad shoulders of his brother in the dark of dawn, nodding to the lamplighters swinging their sparks. And the solid reminder of a week's half-coin is almost worth the graveyard hours. In truth, the pay is paltry – a meager portion of Mr. Gannen's seven coins that Rory always feels guilty taking. But he has mouths at home, too. Surely, he understands, even if a half coin won't buy more than a single sprouting onion. Really, it's Mr. Gannen's tender prattle as he tugs each mule's ear affectionately, his warm hands ruffling Rory's hair after each shift, that recompense his grueling work. _He's a good man, Mr. Gannen. A good father._

And yet. The Gannen girls grate his nerves. Rory will admit readily enough that his daughters inherited the same warm demeanor. It just fits differently on girls, _women_ , like a man's work mitt that's been embroidered and edged with lace until all practicality is gone. They talk incessantly, invade personal space, and dote on whomever they can find. Rory doesn't like being treated as a child.

Vick, however, has taken quite a shine to Bristel. Ever since she moved two shanties down, he heckles her incessantly for new spelling words while she helps Ma with the wash. Sweet, gentle, clueless Vick, who, for all his love of words, has never spelled _danger_ , or _threat_ , or _death_. At times, Rory feels like that is the extent of his vocabulary. Then again, he's never been good at reading or writing.

"Where's Gale?" Vick asks, wet-nosed, "And Katniss?"

"Nothing," Leevy says distractedly, "I mean, nowhere. Katniss just asked me to walk you home so you wouldn't have to wait in this storm." She hunches her shoulders against an icy gust, "It's cold, ain't it?"

Vick's cough rattles wet gravel in reply. Leevy crouches down to wrap his coat securely around his ribs, matching glossy-eyed buttons to their well-worn holes.

"Let's get you home to your ma, hon." She gives a maternal wipe under Vick's nose. "How does that sound, hmm?"

Vick nods doubtfully. Prim gives him a sweetly reassuring smile and takes his hand firmly in hers, as if nothing was wrong and the acrid lies went down easy like sleep syrup. As if the crusts of rust under Leevy's nails were irrelevant.

But Rory knows that stain anywhere, half-circles of blood lining the nail bed – leftover evidence of butchering meat. No matter how hard she scrubs, Katniss always misses a few spots, leaving slender crescent moons, ruddy like the harvest phase, that linger under her nails until the next bath night.

Admittedly, Rory likes the signs of hard work put into a meal – whether it be the knotted rheumatism of hands plucking rat tails from dank straw or the ory scent of blood on long, calloused fingers. But the writhing coils of his gut attest to Leevy's absence in her family's kitchen. The wandering waterways of dried blood along her forehands seem more consistent with a mass butchering: something that could feed the whole Seam.

Only Leevy doesn't handle meat.

Vick coughs again, brittle and sickly. Leevy grabs his free hand and turns to the west side of town, where the Merchant homes stand two-tiered, stooping over grassy yards and garish gardens. She pulls the chain of Hawthorne and Everdeen at a quick pace, determined, brisk. The wrong way.

"Hey," Rory calls out, deep-rooted in his spot. "It's faster down the free-road. We keep on the paving and cut through the square, trims ten minutes off our –"

"We're going by the Merchant Quarter, you hear? No arguin'." She keeps walking, hauling Vick in her bow-legged wake. Prim looks back and gestures earnestly at Rory, urging him on, but he scowls mulishly at the rebuke.

"I'm not goin' by those fancy Townie homes. It's faster the other way."

"Trust me," Leevy turns and feigns a mother's indifference, "it'll feel a lot longer after your brother learns 'bout your disrespect and whoops you into tomorrow."

"Why?" he demands, "Where is he?"

Prim stares imploringly at him. "Please, Rory, just come on so we can get home."

"No. Something's happened and she's not sayin'. Where is he? Where's Katniss?"

Leevy props a hand on her hips. "Listen, Katniss told me to walk you home and that's what I aim to do. But I won't freeze my fingers off tryin' to drive you like a broken mine mule."

It takes two rounds of placating from Prim before he relents, glaring sump holes into the slush underfoot. They walk in strangled silence, four soiled souls among the angelic hordes of blonde Town children, making their pilgrimage home.

At the end of the Quarter, Leevy slinks into an alleyway and crouches in the dim-lit passageway, surveying the street ahead. Faults forgotten, Rory glances over the flats of her shoulders towards the bands of Peacekeepers strung along the dividing line of Town and Seam. Aching echoes toll out in the muffling snow. The Peackeepers work quickly in the cold, driving nails into wooden slats forming an infinite string of barriers.

"What are they –"

Leevy clamps an icy hand over his mouth as a troop of Keepers rage past, dragging a miner by the end of a long rope. His screeching wafts ethereal notes that linger afterward, haunting the cramped alleyway.

For a chilling moment, no one says anything. Then Prim looks to Leevy, her blue eyes a frozen lake riddled with black ice, creaking and cracking under the weight of her concern. Rory feels his own paper-thin resolve melting alarmingly fast. It's all he can do to hold his breath as he plunges into the glacial deeps below, gasping watery petitions on the banks of it, _Please, please. Just say they're alright. Say they made it out. Say anything at all, as long as they're alive._

But Leevy just shakes her head and grips her coat with bloodied hands.

It's a long time sitting there, listening to the _tink-tockering_ nails and tricking himself into believing it's only Posy playing around the corner, tapping ants along the side boards.

He's good at that – tricking himself. He's become a master in the art of lying when necessary, fooling his stomach after meals, making faces at Posy during Reapings, pushing the hot-brick towards Vick's side of the bed, _I'm too hot, you take it._ Some mornings, when it's only Gale creaking in the kitchen chair, he convinces himself his pa is home, if only for a moment. That one took years to manage.

He's not particularly proud of this skill, if you'd call it that, but Gale won't tolerate cheating, stealing or idleness, so lying became his poison of choice. The frequency with which Rory drinks it has nullified its effects on him, but he offers it to Vick, now – a saccharine syrup so sweet it'll make you sick.

"Don't worry," he lies to the young boy's quivering chin, "Leevy knows the way home. We'll be alright."

A stewing look from Leevy indicates that this _was_ , in fact, the way. She stands, flapping her arms with hapless frustration and causing her last remaining coat button to break from its tenuous threads. It clatters to the cobblestones.

"How are we gonna get through that?" Vick shivers at the wooden barricade swarming with busy Peacekeepers.

Bending down to retrieve her button, Leevy catches her warped reflection on its burnished convex. She studies it, straightens slowly, and lets the outline of a plan embroider her face.

"Vick, how many words can you spell in five minutes?"

Vick looks up from the tear in his trousers, confused. "All sorts. I can even spell _arithmetic_ , and that one's hard 'cause–"

"The longest words you know." She tucks the button into her pocket. "Start there."

She smooths her hair, pinches her cheeks, bites her lips. "When you've spelled them all, look to see that no one's there, then run under the blockade. _Quietly_. Don't let anyone see you."

She doesn't look at Vick's knobbly knees ripping runs in his pants, nor Primrose crouched beside him. She doesn't meet Rory's eyes.

"Five minutes," is all she says, "I'll see you on the other side."

They watch, the three of them, as she steps into the street-light, swirled in snow drifts. By the time Vick starts spelling, she's reached the border, heckled on all sides by the pack of Keepers.

_Encompass. E-n-c-o-m-p-_

She jaunts boldly up to the overseeing Peacekeeper lounging against a half-stripped shanty wall. The calls and hoots of the other officers swallow her whole.

_Beset. B-e-s-_

She says something privately to the Peacekeeper, pulling her hands out of her pockets, head cocked coyly. He leans closer.

_Barter. B-a-r-t-_

The Peacekeeper shoos his officers away, beckoning Leevy brusquely with two fingers. He pinches her coat sleeve and pulls her out of sight. The road stands white and empty.

_Quietly. Q-u-i-e-t-_

They run, long-legged.

* * *

"She said to wait for her." Prim's argument takes flight in soft woolly puffs, curling around the wind.

Rory grabs Vick's wrist and starts wandering deeper into the Seam, away from the stilted barricade. "She said she'd meet us on the other side. Never said nothin' 'bout waitin' for her." He puts a gangly burst of conviction into his stride. "Besides, it's been heaps more than five minutes. For all we know, she's up and left us to fend for ourselves. I'm not standin' around to see what happens when the Peacekeepers come back and catch us standin' around like fools at the fence line."

Prim attempts a scowl, but barely manages a prettily worried wrinkle between her eyes. "I just think we should follow instructions. Katniss is relying on her to get us home – that should count for something." Her arms fold over her skinny chest.

"What are you, scared?" Rory stares at her until she blushes.

"I'm not scared," she answers, "But we don't know what's going on or where anyone's at. What if something bad happened to them? There's big trouble going on that we don't know about."

"Well, whose fault is that?"

It's a rare thing that Prim loses her temper, but the cold and adrenaline of their immediate surroundings are eating at everyone's good graces.

"Will you for one moment stop trying to prove to everyone how mature you are and think about more important things than yourself?" She shudders with unfamiliar rage.

If her words didn't ring so painfully honest he might have held back his sneer. "I _am_. You're the one who's hellbent on getting caught." Rory yanks hard on his brother's coat. "And somehow, I don't think that's what Katniss had in mind… Come on, Vick, let's go home."

But Vick stumbles away from him, spluttering between coughs, "I'm gonna stay with Prim. I wanna wait for her."

Rory considers the duo before him, two youngsters looking for all the world like a pair of dropped stitches in his mother's knitting, feebly trying to hold the structure of their world together with sloppy uncertainty.

He shrugs using practiced nonchalance. "Fine, suit yourselves. But those white coats are coming back eventually and when they do, I don't plan on being anywhere near here."

Over the crunch of his footsteps, he can hear the panic bubbling in their eyes.

"You can't just leave us," Vick whines, "Ma says we shouldn't ever walk home alone."

"I'm not leaving you, you're just choosing to stay behind. It's got nothin' to do with me."

" _Rory_. Just stop." Vick grabs at his arm, "Don't go, please."

" _Who's gonna stop me?"_

"I'll tell Gale!"

"You have no idea where he is, bugger. 'Less you read it in your books, somewhere."

"Well, I'll tell – I'll tell Kitty –"

"STOP IT!" Prim stomps over to meet them, "The both of you! You're not helping. We can't just go off on our own – we have to stay together, so play nice or don't speak at all."

Rory glares at her. "When did _you_ become our ma?"

"Since you started squabbling like infants." She juts her chin and Rory can see her sister in her, bold and stubborn, resilient. It lasts only a moment before she buries her head in a sweetly apologetic manner and lowers her voice. "If you're going to go, then we're all going. We need to stick together."

Rory turns on his heel, withholding a retort, and skulks towards the grey of their sector. The timid _pitter-patter_ of footfalls behind him gives him all the confidence he needs to stall the aching arrhythmia of his heart.

He can do this, he knows the way home. He certainly doesn't need Leevy Gannen's hand-holding to cross the street. They'll keep to the backways and privy paths and be just fine. Here's one alley gone by, empty of Peacekeepers. Now… thirteen… no, fifteen… well, some streets more. He _can_ do this.

Silently creeping forward to another lane – empty again, home is ten paces closer than before. A stray mutt barks behind a trash pile as they pass through the connecting street – barren, blank. Rory looks over his shoulder to grin at Vick and Prim trailing behind him, long enough to walk part-way into the next alley…

And stop short at a Peacekeeper's broad, bent back as he buckles his belt. Beyond him, up against the wall and brushing grunge off her skirts, Leevy looks bird-thin in the murky lighting.

There is a suspended cleft in time, akin to jumping into deep water, when the air hovers miles above your head and your body drifts weightless in the water, going neither up nor down. Rory entertains the possibility that the Peacekeeper will keep his back turned, that maybe they can just fall right back out of this well-hole they've stumbled into. But Leevy looks up when the officer spins to the trio of runny-nosed children, and the look in her eyes spurs the slow-motion ascent towards air, painful, acutely suffocating, drowning in despair.

Prim gives a startled whimper beside Vick as realization dawns bright on the officer's face. He glowers at Leevy, pining her closer to the wall with a menacing step.

"You bitch!" he spits disgusted at her feet.

Leevy recoils from his gaze, but when he turns again to the petrified children she mouths frantically –

_Run!_

Suddenly, Rory's pushing at Prim's back, sliding around the corner and pelting down the snow-banked road. He hears the thundering pursuit of the Peacekeeper's boots pounding in time to his heart. Vick wheezes as he struggles to keep pace.

"HEY! Jackin' guttersnipes, I'll beat you dead!" The metal rattle of a cudgel clanking at the officer's waist sets fire to Rory's feet.

"Go, _gogogogo_ ," Rory urges with gasping breath, "Around the corner – _go_!"

He takes up the rear, following Prim and Vick into an alleyway and out onto a worn privy path – head-to-hip with Leevy. They fall in a heap, winded by exertion and collision.

"Is he gone?" Prim pants, her legs pinned under Rory's shoulders.

Silence rings ominously, then, sighs of relief. They painfully collect themselves off the ice and stand, stinging.

"I thought I told you to wait for me," Leevy winces as she straightens, "What in Snow's nose were you doing there?"

Rory bites back hotly, "What were _you_ doing? Cause it looked to me like you was getting' some and leavin' us to be found out by the 'keepers."

"How can you –" Leevy clamps her jaw and for once in his life, Rory watches her flounder for words. "I wasn't – if you had followed my directions…you have no idea what you saw."

Her tone quiets at the end, matching her downcast eyes and fluttery fingers. Rory almost feels guilty for having called her out, for making it sound like a game, what she was doing.

He knew, of course, _what_ they were doing. Gale had had that talk with him ages ago when one of the Town wives, with particular zeal, came-on to his brother on their walk home. But he'd had an inkling before that of what _what_ was. It was hard to ignore the flocks of tramps crossing their morning route, sleepless and battered from their night with Cray. _Early birds_ , his mother calls them, because no one pulls worms for a living unless it's the only way to survive. Most of them have families back home to feed, a fraction always being Cray's red-haired, hazel-eyed brood.

There is _what_ of all kinds throughout the district – brazenly on the slagheap at night, secretly on Town house doorsteps before the first light, illegally in the Hob's backrooms round the hour. It's a livelihood for those who partake, a trade for money, food, supplies, or sometimes just a reprieve from district life.

Yet, in the Hawthorne and Everdeen households respectively, _what_ is considered a hazard, one far greater than trading at the Hob, or owning weapons, or poaching outside the fence. Rory is sure neither Gale nor Katniss have ever availed themselves of its resources – even as a last resource. From what Gale has outlined in scant details, love (or not) leads to _what_ , _what_ leads to babies, and babies lead to bad. And all it takes is one _what_.

So, it's a surprise, yes, when he ascertains exactly _what_ Leevy and the Peacekeeper were doing in the alleyway. Not that she bribed the officer with it – that in itself is rampantly common, but because he _knows_ her. _Leevy Gannen_ , the neighborhood girl who's always eager to watch your children and fantasize roles of motherhood. Rory's spent his life dodging doting hugs and gooey kisses, enraged by her nerve for thinking she could ever deputize a parent's role.

 _A good girl_ , they call her, _sweet_. He's lost count of the times his mother has cuffed him for the things _he_ calls her. Even within hearing, Leevy's too busy mooning over Gale to care.

 _She's a nice girl, Rory,_ she'd scold him, _you can't dislike a girl for being nice_.

She's right, of course. Rory can't hate her for being nice. But Leevy Gannen, he's discovered, is nothing but a surreptitious tart. And he can hate her for that.

It's not that he's a prude – certainly not. Only, he's had such a strong model of principle from his parents and proxy-parents that to unearth this fault, so craftily concealed under a seamless façade, and in someone he knows nonetheless, is intensely disappointing. Katniss would never have resorted to this. She would've thought of a dozen different options, would've even fought the officers hand to hand if need be, before she thought of this. Of that he is sure.

Leevy is spitting with justification when she stops frozen. "Do you hear that?"

Everyone's ears cock forward, listening: a faint jangle moving quick and fast, a thudding of heavyset boots aggressively sucking the street slush.

"Quick! In the privy!" Leevy starts pushing them towards the shambled outhouse, putrefying with all manner of rank smells and fetid fluids.

"What? No piffin' way. I'm not –"

Rory doesn't finish his protest. In an instant, he's choking on the cloud of flies that flood up from the three-foot privy pit. The door just barely shuts with the four of them pressed up against the walls, holding their breath in the stale air. Leevy holds the rotten plywood shut by the broken lock chains, face pressed up to the ventilation holes, peering out. Rory closes his eyes against the stench of urine and fear.

"Do you hear him?" Vick whispers from the corner.

Leevy shushes him. Slowly, gradually, the crunch of ice comes sauntering to the pathway. He seems to pause, taking in the trampling footprints, the crisp ridges of solid mud, the ramshackle outhouse. Then, steadily, his footsteps retrace the road to Town, unhurried.

Rory releases a little laugh, puffing out flies on each heave. When Leevy cracks a tentative smile, Prim joins in, nearly buoyant with relief, and Vick, blushing, peels himself from her side, pouting.

"I wasn't scared. Just tryna make sure Prim was al-"

He slips suddenly, bashing his head into the moss-slicked wall behind him, then sinking feet-first into the pit with a viscous _slop_. The lean-to walls judder and jolt from impact, squealing with dampened age.

Foul gases billow up in clouds from the pit. Like a wash tub on winter mornings, the contents of the privy had formed a thick protective layer overtop, suppressing the worst of the smells. But the instant Vick's feet shatter the brittle sheet of ice, it's suffocatingly sharp. He looks up, green-faced.

"Don't panic," Leevy instructs, "We'll get you out of there, just hold on…"

She trails off as the warning sounds of crunching ice return, bearing resolutely towards the shuddering shack. Holding a finger to her lips, she returns to the door, hands curling around the deadbolt once more.

The officer circles their hideaway in long, menacing strides. He arrives at the front, pulls on the door, rattles the bolt. All the while, Leevy grips the green-rotted chains with white knuckles. Flies settle spindly legs on Rory's face.

Hot puffs of air seep through the wall joints as somebody leans in close to the ventilation grate. "Cragging mutts…" a baritone mutters next to the crack by Rory's ear. The shack is stone-still.

Finally, _finally_ , he pounds one fist angrily on the decaying door, nearly knocking it in, and clomps off towards the main road. Leevy's eyelids flutter in relief and a long crease of silence enfolds them, around the squelch and frost and bug-flutter. From a distance, the Peacekeeper's boots chew at the rivulets of ice caught between the gravel, growing further and farther away. _Safe_.

Leevy cracks the door open trembling, peers about, and nods at Rory to help Prim extricate Vick from the pit. They brush the worst of the muck from his pants and shoes, wrinkling their noses at the stench. On the way out, Rory pauses to catch Leevy's eye, because he's desperate now for a sign, a hint, a clue as to what is going on, even if it hurts him. His hunger for the truth is so extreme that he'll brave the biting fire to retrieve even the smallest breadcrumb of a loaf, no matter how charred the crust is. And if it lingers ashen in his mouth, all the better. Bitterness is a formidable motivator.

But Leevy evades his gaze, unwrapping the scarf from around her neck to wipe sewer sludge off Vick's face, tenderly, apologetically; nothing at all reflective of her prior deeds against a neighboring alley wall. So, Rory saves it for another time, when the sins of the past have aired their fetor and mellowed in the wind. The streets are flooded with countless other concerning smells, besides:

The roiling storm quick approaching, clean and crisp, bright and biting.

Gun powder thickening the air, hazy with grit, stinking of weed ash.

Blood on Leevy's scarf, caustic in his nostrils similar to snuffing metal shavings.

And above it all, the virulent stench of hidden truths, like a shoal of rotting fish trapped under an ice sheet.

No one says a word. Instead, they run, hands over noses, slipping on the frozen road.

With time, the ice will melt, and only then will they realize their mistake was fleeing. As if distance alone could clear the air of those toxic contaminants defiling the grey, slurried streets. For after every winter, a new spring will come and the waters will dissolve with snow, flooding over. It's inevitable, really, that this should pass. The surging current always carries what winter has tried to bury, things that best remain unknown.

* * *

Their house leans small and unassuming in the swirling snowfall, soft light streaming from the shattered kitchen window. The brown papering Gale had used to patch the missing panes has been stripped away by the blustering storm. Now, a familiarly flowered bed sheet hangs in its place.

It feels strange to be walking up the front steps with Leevy in tow, the positions that Gale and Katniss take up in the rear blowing cold and empty. For a terrifying second, Rory is afraid that he'll open the door and find someone else's life inside, puttering merrily oblivious to his tumultuous day. But then he hears Posy's chattering within and he opens the hollow door and smells the sharp fumes of soapberries and lavender sprigs simmering over the fire. Just as quickly, Rory is convinced with feverish certitude of his belonging here – in the smell of it, feel of it, warmth of it. In the way Posy tangles in his legs and Ma looks up with a smile, soft as worn-out leather. He thinks if even the mule sheds smelled like this he would live the rest of his days there.

Ma pulls her hands bright red and blushing out of the hot lye solution in her wash bin, wringing them dry on her faded apron. She holds the door open to usher them in and for her part, doesn't bat an eye at Gale and Katniss' absences, nor Leevy's alerting presence. She only tucks some straggling hair into her kerchief as she does before Posy throws a fit, when she is expecting the whole world to turn upside down in the blink of an eye.

"Leevy, dear, what a wonderful surprise. I just sent your sister to pick up some laundry for me, I hope you aren't here looking for her."

Leevy folds easily into Ma's hospitable hug, shaking her head. "I saw her in town already, thanks."

A probing silence chokes the room while Posy wades through their legs searching for two pairs of mud-caked boots tangled in chickweed. Ma looks to Leevy expectantly.

"I, uhh…" Rory watches Leevy's throat bob as she swallows her tongue. "Actually, I saw Katniss in town, too. She asked me to walk the kids home from school, you know, so they wouldn't be waitin' in this storm."

Ma nods slowly. "Well… bless your heart. I'm sure we all appreciate your help." She eyes the soggy, dripping children clustered at the door. "Don't we?"

Prim responds with charming promptness, "Yes, thank you, Leevy. It was very kind of you to walk us home."

Vick complies with similar meekness and commences a coughing fit that disguises Rory's lack of gratuitous comment. Ma peels the frail boy out of his jacket and pushes him towards the hearth. "Take your homework in front of the fire, Vick. You shouldn't be splashing in puddles with your cough, you know better."

Turning to Leevy, she whisks away her sodden coat and hangs it on the clotheslines running wall to wall.

"You're soaked to the bone, love. Let me pour you some tea – I have a pot boiling right here. Rory, look in the cupboard above and see if we don't have a bit of bread somewhere."

Rory doesn't budge from where Posy peers barefoot out the open door, into the white wind.

"Did you hear me – Posy, shut that door! You're letting all the heat out! Tend to your sister, Rory."

Posy kicks and whines when he scoops her up, handing her to Prim while he latches the door shut. Her wailing only escalates.

"Nooo! Don't lock him out! He wants to come in! STOOOOP!"

Ma seats her sternly on a chair and grips her cheeks with one hand. "You stop this now, young lady. I won't have you misbehaving with company here."

Posy takes in shuddery gulps of soap-scented air, "B-but Rory shut the door." She points an accusatory finger. "He's being mean!"

Ma bats her finger away. "Don't you point fingers in this household. I'll put you in the corner, I will!"

At this, Posy floods with tears, flinging herself into her mother's arms. "No, not the corner, I don't want the corner."

"Then stop your crying and sit quietly with Vick."

Posy nods shamefaced and scoots off the chair, glancing furtively over her shoulder to pout at Rory, "If he knocks, you must let him in. He will whip you if you don't."

Rory shakes his head baffled, "Who, Pose?"

She answers with the certitude of nearly four years living and many years unlived, _l_ 's slurred with an infantile drawl. "Gale."

Leevy's cup clatters noisily to the table. "We'd better be off. Mrs. Everdeen has some new patients she needs help with." Her voice is too loud for the small house. "I promised I'd have Prim home to help."

"You're barely dry." Ma objects, "Finish your tea and warm some before you venture into that storm again, otherwise it'll be you who are the new patients. Oh, and Prim, sweet, don't let me forget to send you with the soap your mother was wanting –"

"Actually, Mrs. Hawthorne, Bristel mentioned needing your help carrying laundry back from the West Sector… You wouldn't mind walking Prim home, would you? Seeing as it's on your way?" Leevy glances up quickly from her cup, "I'm happy to stay here with the kids, of course."

Leevy's request hangs lucid with unease, more transparent a cover than the bedsheet tacked over the window, whipping in the wind. Even Vick, hunched in the far corner by the fire, pulls his head up from his school slate skeptically. Amidst the anticipatory hush, Ma pauses with her hand in the soap bucket and withdraws it slowly.

"Of course," she nods and plasters an unconvincing smile on her face, "Of course. I would be happy to. Let me just – my shawl…"

Prim presses the fraying pink homespun into her lye-blistered hands, searching her face with anxious eyes. Fondly, Ma smooths the honey-glinting flyaways from Prim's face before she unties her apron and wraps herself in the tattered tassels of her shawl. Her hand rests gently on Prim's shoulder.

"Right-oh, have you got everything? School pail? Mittens? Good." She nods once. "Rory, you'll make sure Vick drinks his tea? He knows how to brew it. And don't forget to bring in the wood so it doesn't soak –"

Rory stands, screeching his chair back on its hind legs. "I'm coming, too."

"You _are not_. You'll stay and help Leevy with Posy – she's in a mood, today. And _don't_ let Vick skip his tea, he'll be coughin' all night otherwise. There's turnips and jerky in the cupboard – y'know how to fix a meal. I'll be back before this storm worsens."

"But I –"

"No arguin', y'hear, or I'll have you doin' chores to pay for your headstone."

Drawn by the scuffle of boots near the door, Posy comes running around the corner with wild exuberance. Her face falls at the sight of her mother bundled to depart. Quicker than a pit prop's collapse under the coal seam above, and with equal devastation, a multitude of tears stream from her eyes, fleeing the earth-shattering destruction within.

"No, mama, don't leave! I don't want you to go! Stay, please!"

Ma swoops her onto her hip, tracing her thumb through the deep, wet runnels down her face. "Hush, lovey, I'll be home to tuck you in. Be a good girl for Leevy, won't you?"

Posy buries her shaking head in Ma's neck with toddler dramatism.

"Now, none of that. If I hear you threw a fit for Ms. Leevy, your brother will be sitting you down in the corner himself. You don't want that do you?"

Posy kicks her feet half heartedly, but picks at the raveling fringe of her mother's shawl. "I wanna play with Gale an' Kitty…" she whimpers through tear-drunk hiccups.

"Well, you won't be playing at all if you misbehave tonight young lady. Find it in your heart to spare Leevy the worst of your mischief, will you? Here, Rory, take her." Hazelle holds out his fussing sister and dumps her unceremoniously into his arms. "Don't forget Vick's tea!" she calls to him over her shoulder, following Prim out the door.

And just like that, Rory Hawthorne, with all his thirteen years prevailing, stares modestly uncertain at the door, a screaming toddler in his arms and a reeling, whirling mind.

He's relieved for the first time that day for Leevy's company when she takes Posy with a woman's sureness and bounces her jauntily in her lap, distracting the four-year old with silly rhymes and nose rubs.

To this day, he remains mystified as to how Gale adapted to fatherhood overnight – all those long, colicky nights, Posy howling and Gale soothing her while Ma slept. He changed diapers, ran bath night, helped with school work, clothed them, fed them, supported a family in every way. Rory's sure there was many a night he never actually slept, only handed the baby to Ma come morning and walked Rory and Vick to school before trudging to the woods. But he never complained. Not even when Vick woke him up one night with the stomach flu and hurled all over him. Or when Rory stuck his head through the crawl space lattice on a dare and Gale had to cut him out.

He doesn't know if it's gotten any easier now that they're older. Sure, they don't cry nearly as much and Rory isn't as stupid as he used to be. Despite Vick's fragile health, life seems to have leveled out somewhat – as much as it can in District 12. But Gale's nearly eighteen now, and Rory catches the late-night conversations between his brother and mother, about the mines and a new house and _future family_.

" _Do you ever think of having a family, Gale?" Ma's voice drifts dreamily between Rory and Vick's entangled limbs, crammed onto their shared twin bed. Candlelight leaks through the door, pulsing._

_Above Vick's soft snoring, Gale's voice comes abashed and laughing, "I don't know, ma. Maybe. Not yet."_

" _You could, you know, you're allowed to. Blackness knows, you've done more than your fair share for this family. You deserve one of your own."_

 _Gale hesitates. "This_ _ **is**_ _my family. I promised Pa I'd take care of them no matter what and I'm not going back on that."_

" _Gale, love, your father would understand if you finally decided to start a life of your own. He never wanted this for you. You retain the right to choose your own path. Always."_

_A snort. "No, I don't. The Capitol has made damn sure of that."_

" _You know what I mean."_

" _Yeah…I do."_

_The room quiets, then:_

" _Do you want children, ever? Or have your own siblings turned you well enough off of that idea?"_

_Gale exhales a soft chuckle, "No, they haven't – as much as they pain me, they haven't discouraged me any. I just – it's complicated, living here. Maybe somewhere else. But… I don't know. Besides, Rory just got into the bowl, and Prim and Vick follow in a couple years. I won't be able to think of much else until they're safe, all of them. After…maybe."_

" _But you'll be an old man by the time Posy gets through with her Reapings. Surely you'll want a family before that?"_

" _Nah, I'll be fine, ma."_

_A lull stretches through the house, long and terminal so that Rory is almost asleep when his mother's voice hums again._

" _And Katniss? How does she feel about the future?"_

" _You know."_

_Rory translates the ensuing silence as one of Ma's upturned eyebrows asking difficult questions._

" _She's Katniss. Doesn't want a family, doesn't want kids, would rather never fall in love. I have no idea what she'll do once she's out of the Reapings. Probably just worry about Prim – that's what she does best. Unto her dying day." He gives a light laugh._

" _She'll find love. A girl like her doesn't stay lonely for very long. And let me tell you, with marriage, there's no waiting when it comes to kids. Those 'family planning' figures the Capitol swears by are far from accurate, and you're the damning evidence."_

_A pause._

" _Not that I regret it, of course. You're one of the best things that's happened to me, Gale. I mean it."_

" _Thanks, ma."_

" _I still think Katniss will end up married like the rest. Just you wait. She's a natural with Posy."_

" _She doesn't think so. Says she hates kids."_

" _And you believe that? She discredits herself a lot of her talents, but that doesn't make it true. She's wonderful with Vick and Rory, too."_

" _Well, she's had a lot of practice. Prim's barely known a mother other than Katniss. I can't imagine stepping into that role at eleven."_

" _You were young, too. And you've both done fine jobs, better than most."_

" _We try."_

" _You do. I know you do."_

It bothers him on some private level that Gale might have a family of his own someday. He knows, of course, that Gale won't always be there to wake him in the morning, ruffle his hair, wrestle him teasingly, shelter him from the street whores. He doesn't always see eye to eye with him, because that's who Rory is and that's who Gale is. Rory's been a maddening thorn in Gale's side ever since Pa died and he's been nothing but patient with him.

The truth is, Rory doesn't want his status as younger-brother-younger-bother dealt to anyone else. There was a brief time during which Rory worried that Katniss had replaced him. Gale had just met her – a skinny, sullen twelve-year old who never spoken and never smiled. It was a good three months before anyone else had the pleasure of meeting her in person – she was skittish, too, but Gale had painted her well enough with his grumblings and complaints.

" _She follows me like a lost dog but won't answer a single question."_

" _Do you know, I caught her giving out crappies for a quarter piece each? She would've saved more chucking them at the Community House."_

" _She's an open book. Everyone knows when they're getting a bad deal."_

But then one day, she was there, skulking on their front steps with dark eyes and braided hair and a steady, confident glare that cut right through you. Rory understood, right then at nine-years old, that Katniss Everdeen would never outplace him. No, she had a claim entirely of her own that no one else could ever touch. She wasn't going anywhere.

And neither was he.

They've forged a peculiar bond out of the years, Rory and Katniss, over this untouchable hold they have on Gale – he as a brother, a son, a purpose to keep working for, striving for, and return to each night, she as a partner, an equal of some sorts who can match him pace for pace, word for word, beat for beat. They're irreplaceable, as they are. And there's some comfort in that.

Others have tried to take their place, but none have shone a candle's flicker to what he and Katniss offered. Perhaps that's why he so distrusts Leevy Gannen: because she's taken her turn on the front steps, too, and as sweet as she is, she's even sweeter for Gale. Not as blatantly as some, there's been a steady stream for sure, but fairly obvious if Rory's noticed it at all. He's not sure whatever came of it, but she still stops by with her sister and blinks those pretty grey eyes at him endlessly. Womenfolk remain a mystery to him.

She's puzzling, still, when she knocks on the bedroom door wearing Ma's yarrow yellow dress, fresh-faced and smelling of cedarwood soap. It's small and cramped with all three boys cohabiting the closet-sized bedroom – a single pine dresser and a wire bed, the extra mattress pushed underneath during the day. Their father's old texts line the wall proudly.

"We've all run through the bath. Thought you'd like a go at it 'fore the water turns cold." She adds gently, "Dinner's almost ready."

"We never eat without Gale." He studies a knot in the floorboards, ties his fingers in knots, unties them.

She sighs, crossing over to the bed gingerly. "Rory, Gale isn't coming home. Not tonight, at least."

"Why not." He doesn't raise his eyes. His fingers become tangled in their own ropes and still for a moment, silently strangling.

"I, uhh…" She takes a seat on the edge of the bed and tenses at the coils creaking. "Well, there was a riot in town – things got intense, sulphur bombs and the like. Peacekeepers started shooting, I think."

"He was in town?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Leevy's forehead creases. "To trade, I think. Probably hunted this morning."

"You're lying." Rory rises from the bed and turns to her. "He never trades in Town except at the public market on Saturday. Why was he there?"

Leevy sighs, shrugging. "I don't know, I don't keep tabs on your brother. It's his own business."

"I _know_ you know. I'm not stupid! _What was he doing there, Leevy?_ Why won't you tell me what's going on?"

"Because –" Leevy flounders briefly. "Listen, he had a turkey!" she cries finally, "He had a turkey that he was selling and he got caught in the riot. That's _all_ , Rory."

He shakes his head vehemently. "No, that's not right. He would've sold the turkey to Cray, not a Merchant – he would've been at the Peace Quarters, nowhere near the square. And what about Katniss? They wouldn't separate in Town – it's too dangerous."

He glares at her as she trembles and sniffs on the groaning bed. He hates her distress almost as much as he hates its implications. "Rory, please, don't…"

"Don't _what_? Ask questions? I have as much a right to know as anyone else."

"I can't –" she sobs into her hand, "I can't tell you. I don't know what happened, just…they caught him and tried him for poaching and possession, 'long with a lengthy list of misdemeanors. There wasn't anything anyone could do. It was too official."

The air is stodgy with tears and disbelief. Rory stiffens, too.

"Is he in jail?" he asks with wide, wet eyes. He's heard of people serving time in the district jail. Archer Browman's pa was imprisoned for unsettled debts and given a sentence pending their payment, but he died from hunger and cold prematurely. A poacher's sentence would be much shorter, and just as permanent. "Keeper Cray could get 'im out, couldn't he?"

Leevy swallows a cry. "He isn't in prison, you goose. They _whipped_ _him_. The Peacekeepers _whipped him_." She scrubs at her face with one yellow sleeve. "Cripes, I thought – I thought he was going to die." Her face crumples tearfully.

Rory stands awkwardly facing her, unsure if he should comfort her or shake her or leave her be. Thirteen years doesn't feel quite old enough to have decoded the separate worlds of women and grief, much less their combined realms.

"I'm sorry," she rubs her eyes red until the tears stop. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. It's alright, really. Just come sit down, Rory, I'm sorry." She reaches out for him blindly, but he twists from her grasp.

"Don't be like that. There's nothing to worry about. Come sit, Rory, everything's okay. _Please_."

Rory retreats from the bedside warily, eying the soggy stains down his mother's dress and Leevy's swollen, weepy gaze. He edges towards the door. Outside, Vick diverts Posy's attention from the pealing racket with a careful citation of the dictionary, word by awful word.

"Rory," Leevy cautions, "you can't tell them. You can't let them know, okay? They're too young."

Rory shakes his head, fumbling for the door knob.

"Rory, wait –"

Before she has a chance to finish, he's stumbling past Vick and Posy in the living room, two spring peepers peering up at him with wet hair. He bursts into the frigid darkness of his parents' bedroom and undoes the solid pine doors to his mother's armoire. It's cool and calm and quiet nestled between the rows of soapy aprons and mending piles, but he continues crawling till he reaches the back panel, even as the doors swing shut and the light evaporates. He stubs his fingers on a square chest stashed in the corner and opens it with reverent hands, snuffing soothing lungfuls of musty cloth to his face. The garment's broken buttons clack together in the restricting blackness.

It has been a while since Rory last visited his father's dwindling reserve of clothes – many have gone to Gale over the years, others sold for a night's worth of paraffin during those first hard months. But in unspoken agreement, a few were preserved, folded neatly as the day they lost their immediate worth, and tucked away in his mother's hope chest at the back of the wardrobe.

Rory can remember each shirt in perfect clarity on his father. After work, he would come home blackened head to toe in coal smut, and it was their game to guess the true colors of his attire that day – a nearly impossible job, as his father was a blast miner assembling delicate explosives in the belly of the mine. He was the best in the district. Besides his family, his ten prevailing fingers were his biggest source of pride. Not once in his fifteen-year career had he made a single fault – it seemed preposterous that the day he finally did, it was the biggest Panem had ever seen.

Rory tucks the fabric to his chest, resting his head against the sap-scented walls of the armoire and shutting his eyes against Leevy's entreating calls, Vick's inquiring questions. The bedroom door opens briefly while Leevy searches the area, then closes for the remainder of the night.

Throughout the evening, he catches the clink of spoons from dinner, and later, bedtime stories in the boys' room. Leevy's lilting voice slides between the layers of walls and wood and wool. Unwittingly, his eyes seal shut against the day, lulled by the monotonous scrape of laundry against the washboard.

He startles awake hours later, a tally of every second spent cramped on the armoire floor etched on his body. Soft voices drum against the house's thin timber.

"… _he alright?"_

" _He's in good hands, now."_

" _And Katniss?"_

" _Won't let anyone else tell her otherwise. She's a strong one, she is."_

_A chair croaks as someone sits, sighing forcefully._

" _I put Posy in bed with Vick. She wouldn't sleep without you."_

" _She didn't give you a hard time, did she?"_

" _She was sweet as honey. They're good kids."_

" _Well, we do our best. Rory asleep already?"_

" _No… he, uh, he wheedled the truth out of me and ran off. He's hiding somewhere in the house, I couldn't find him. I'm so sorry, I know I shouldn't have –"_

" _Hush, don't apologize. I swear that boy causes more drama than Posy on a bad day. He's alive and unharmed thanks to you, that's more than enough to be grateful for. I really can't thank you enough, Leevy, for all that you've done." A whisper of a gasp. "And the laundry, too - Leevy, you shouldn't have."_

" _It was nothing. I wish it was more."_

" _Nonsense, at this point, I'm not sure how we'll repay you. You're welcome to stay the night. The storm near swallowed me comin' home."_

" _I'm not going far. I'm staying at Bristel and Field's place, two shanties down. I'll be fine."_

" _If you say so. Take care, dear."_

" _I will. Let us know? How they're doing?"_

" _Of course."_

_A gust of wind clicks the door shut firmly. Footsteps scuff wearily into the bedroom. The wardrobe handles rattle noisily and then late-night candle blaze streams in as the doors open, framing his mother's wistful face in waning shadow._

"Rory Hawthorne. Just what are you doing on my closet floor?"

"I just –"

"Pick yourself up, boy – this instant! I won't have two sons laid low in the same day… Now, young man."

Rory gathers himself hurriedly, ducking under the curtain of skirts and aprons. Standing in the light, he winces at his senses returning: bones straightening, light piercing, cold seeping. And the overwhelming scent of vinegar on his mother's dress. She smells clinical, not at all herself.

"I just wanna'd be alone, Ma, that's all."

She gazes down at him reproachfully. "I _need_ you, Rory, now more than ever. You can't be only thinkin' of yourself. You have a family to help care for. And today is as good a reminder as any that you can't rely on Gale or myself to always be there."

"Is he –"

"That's enough. We've got our work cut out tomorrow and I expect you to shoulder your load, y'hear? Now off to bed."

Rory ducks his head contritely and shuffles to the door, pausing once to look back.

"Ma. I'm real sorry."

She nods and something within her wilts as she looks at him with heavy eyes.

"I know."

* * *

The bedroom floor is woven with his siblings' sprawling limbs. Rory skirts their sleeping sighs and clambers atop the brass bed, remembering when he would dream of much smaller things than the past, of simple things, of air - enough for Vick to breathe and Gale to laugh, for his father to fill with stories. Laying in Gale's sheets, wrapped in the scent of him, it hurts how much they smell of his father's shirts. Like wet loam and dark green and something solemn and strong, like smoke.

Floating from his parents' room, Rory listens to the scraping of his mother's hope chest scour the floor. Its hinges moan, yawning wide. Then, quietly, faintly, bitter sobs drift through the shared wall.

It hits him with sudden breathlessness, the realization that his mother is crying. He can't remember the last time she wept. Even when his father died, there was never any time for grieving, what with Posy due any day and the laundry coming in mountains. Vick was so sick, he couldn't breathe most nights – the accident had made the air tacky with ash. The possibilities of something truly terrible nauseate him.

Gale's death cuts painfully sudden through his thoughts, gnawing an icy pit in his stomach. _But no, Ma had told Leevy he was alright, hadn't she?_

 _Not exactly. She said 'in good hands'._ And with a roiling mind, Rory imagines Purnia Meadowfrey's crooked hands preparing a cold, stiff body.

In the faintly glowing light of Ma's candle, he clutches a handful of Gale's sheets to his cheek, smelling again that familiar musk, warm, comforting. Safe. Yet, not enough to soothe the growing ache as his remaining crumbs of childhood are pecked to pieces. Slowly, painfully, he feels it leave him. The dull, numbing weight of responsibility straddles him by the ribs and cracks them one by one.

With a gasp, Rory whispers to the chasming black. _Stop_. As if one word would reverse the day entirely – reverse time itself.

In union with his mother's grief, his father's fault, his brother's beaten back. _Stop_.

Beneath the candle's sputtering breath and the suffocating night. _Stop_.

And in the darkness, a whisper back. _You're going to kill him. Stop._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooookay... longtime-no-see. I've been overwhelmed with hs graduation, nursing school applications, and general life things - eek!  
> In other news, I've set up a tumblr account (theoryofmice . tumblr . com) where I post chapter previews and story/writing related goodies. If you like, go visit me and pile up my inbox with questions and/or annoying update messages. I might actually consent.  
> I hope you all have a lovely week! Thank you for reading, and as always, let me know in the comments what I could be doing better. Improvement is the only way forward!  
> Much love,  
> theory of mice


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